Ben Stafford - CPRE

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ePolitix.com speaks to Ben Stafford, head of campaigns at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, about "Stop the Drop", CPRE's new campaign against litter in the UK.

Question: CPRE has a long history of campaigning against litter. How much of a problem is litter in Britain's countryside now compared to the previous decades?

Ben Stafford: Litter and fly-tipping are a growing and widespread problem in the UK. Statistics show the amount of litter dropped is up by 500 per cent since the 1960s. Nearly half the population (48 per cent) admit to dropping litter.

Although there are only a relatively small number of persistent litter droppers and fly-tippers, there are some quite shocking statistics about the amount of litter that is dropped.

It is estimated that 1.3 million pieces of rubbish are dropped on Highways Agency roads alone every weekend. Over a year, this adds up to a staggering 67.2 million pieces of rubbish. A third of all drivers have admitted to throwing litter while on the road. Local authorities in England reported that they had dealt with more than 2.6 million incidents of fly-tipping in 2006-07, but fewer that 1,800 of these were successfully prosecuted.

When looking at the short-term trends, the overall measure of litter, which is compiled by ENCAMS - the parent body of the Keep Britain Tidy campaign - reveals that the general level of litter has dropped from 'satisfactory' to 'unsatisfactory' in the last 12 months. So, both long-term and short-term, the problem is getting worse.

A further important consideration is the issue of the cost associated with cleaning up litter. In 2006-07, it cost local authorities £73.7m to clean up illegally dumped waste. It also costs more than £600m each year to clean up litter.

In these difficult economic times there are more important priorities that these funds could be used for and it seems like a terrible waste that all that money should be spent on cleaning up litter.

Question: What does "Stop the Drop" hope to achieve?

Ben Stafford: Through the Stop the Drop campaign CPRE hopes to help tackle litter and fly-tipping by raising public awareness, changing behaviour and by urging public bodies responsible for dealing with litter and fly-tipping to take action.

We hope to see both central government and local government taking a lead on tackling litter and fly-tipping. We would also like to see other landowning bodies such as Network Rail, the Highways Agency and the Environment Agency playing a greater role.

We also work closely with the Keep Britain Tidy Campaign, which has organised a number of successful campaigns over the years, specifically in urban areas. In particular, we would like to see them taking a more active interest in the rural dimensions of litter and fly-tipping.

This is an important issue as rural litter is often left to lie almost indefinitely. In towns and cities litter is dropped but it is also cleaned up in a reasonable period of time. However, very often in the countryside it will not get picked up at all and that is a particularly big concern for CPRE, our members and our supporters.

Question: Your president, Bill Bryson, is passionate about tackling litter and fly-tipping. What benefits does his interest bring to your campaign?

Ben Stafford: Bill Bryson's interest in the campaign is of huge benefit to "Stop the Drop". Bill Bryson is someone who is well regarded and admired by the public. I think it is to his great credit that he has taken this issue on and pushed it forward.

Bill has been talking and writing about litter and fly-tipping for a long time. I remember that he wrote about it in Notes from a Small Island, which of course is the book that brought him into the consciousness of many people in this country. He really is passionate about the issue.

Bill brings a great profile and impetus to the campaign and very eloquently expresses how so many people feel about litter. Although he has lived in Britain for a long time, he is originally from America, so he is able to offer a visitor's perspective on the image that we project as a country to the rest of the world.

I think that is something that we should be very aware of. We do not want visitors to Britain to think that we have little regard for our surroundings and that we are happy to live in a fairly squalid and spoilt countryside.

Question: What is the likely immediate impact of the increasing quantities of litter on public health and the countryside?

Ben Stafford: I think there are a number of issues related to this. Litter diminishes the quality of the areas in which you find it, but it can also have health impacts. Hazardous waste can get into water sources and cause contamination. Litter also leads to increases in the rat population which can be a serious problem in both towns and the countryside.

There is also a significant impact from litter on pets and wildlife. Over 69,000 animals were killed or injured by litter last year in Britain. It is estimated that every year over one million seabirds and 100,000 turtles and sea mammals die through ingesting litter or by being caught up in plastic and strangled or drowned.

In terms of the countryside, one of the things that people value most about the countryside is its beauty. This beauty is greatly diminished by incidences of litter and fly-tipping and we feel that people are less likely to care about and want to protect a countryside that is trashed by litter and fly-tipping.

Question: How significant are the public attitudes to litter and fly-tipping to the campaign's success? What action is needed to influence these attitudes? How does the CPRE intend to do this?

Ben Stafford: I think public attitudes matter a great deal. We need public pressure on decision makers to make them take action on litter and fly-tipping. We also require the small but often rather persistent minority of litter droppers to change their behaviour.

The evidence suggests that the public really does care about litter. We know that MPs are inundated by letters from their constituents about litter and fly-tipping. According to a MORI poll in July 2007, the public are more concerned with litter and graffiti than they are about climate change.

We would not suggest for a minute that litter and graffiti are more serious problems than climate change but I think it links back to the point about people caring and being passionate about their local environment.

If you want people to care about global environmental issues, you have to start local and litter is a really damaging factor in terms of the quality of the local environment.

In terms of what the CPRE can do to achieve this, I would say that we have been very successful in using the media to build a public profile. We have had excellent coverage for the campaign; including a Panorama documentary on August 11 watched by 4.5 million people, that I think demonstrates how concerned people are about this issue.

We also use the network of branches we have in every English county to raise the profile of the work we are doing. We have set up a website called www.litteraction.org.uk jointly with Cleanup UK, which allows individuals or members of a local group to organise clean-up drives and awareness-raising educational activities in their local area.

They can also get involved in debates on the kind of things that need to be done to deal with litter and fly-tipping. In this way, not only are we trying to educate and inform people about the scale of the problem but we are also giving them ways in which they can get involved.

Question: To what extent is this campaign about changing people's behaviour, and to what extent about more action by central and local government and other responsible bodies?

Ben Stafford: It is both really. Bill Bryson has said that we only need to do two things to crack the litter problem. The first is to stop people dropping litter and the second is to get it picked up.

Now of course we recognise that these are both very big challenges, but we feel that litter has to some extent slipped down the list of campaigning issues in the last few years.

If you compare the public profile of cleaning up litter now to what it was in the 1970s, sadly it is not as high. Yet we are witnessing a problem that is getting worse. Therefore, we think it is time for an increased emphasis on tackling litter and fly-tipping and that means a big leadership role for government, local authorities and others in achieving that.

Question: Are the laws for tackling litter and fly-tipping in the UK adequate? Is any new legislation needed, or any changes to existing legislation?

Ben Stafford: One thing that we can say is that Britain has some very effective and strong laws for dealing with litter and fly-tipping. These laws were bolstered recently by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005.

There are a number of laws and penalties in place to deal with litter. For example, it is illegal to drop litter and you can be fined up to £80 on the spot if you are caught littering. Local authorities and other public bodies also have duties to clean up litter.

As well as it being a crime to drop litter it is now a crime to leave it uncollected. Fly-tipping can also incur fines of up to £20,000 or six months' imprisonment.

One of the gaps which we would identify in the current legislation relates to the issue of fly-tipping on private land. At the moment, if fly-tipping takes place on public land it is the responsibility of the relevant public authority (or the Environment Agency for hazardous waste) to clean it up.

However, if fly-tipping takes place on private land it is currently the responsibility of the private land owner to deal with this at their own expense. Clearly this is a problem for people whose land is being targeted in this way by those who are carrying out a serious crime in terms of fly-tipping. This places a cost on private individuals which I believe is a problem.

Fundamentally, though, there are good anti-litter and fly tipping laws in place in Britain. The key issue is enforcing them and I am afraid that enforcement is currently very patchy.

Question: How important is it in the fight against litter and fly-tipping that local government and others make use of their powers?

Ben Stafford: It's crucial. It is a matter of local authorities recognising the powers they have and making use of them, which is critically important in dealing with litter and fly-tipping. You can have any number of measures to fine and impose penalties but if those powers are not utilised they will fail in deterring people from littering and fly-tipping as they will appear like consequence-free crimes.

There are signs that local authorities are starting to use their powers more but we believe that there is still a long way to go. The last time that ENCAMS surveyed litter in 2006-07, not one local authority that they surveyed achieved a good rating.

In the same year, just 25 of the 354 English local authorities handed out 62 per cent of the fines for littering and 72 local authorities did not issue any fines at all. We would not imagine that in those 72 local authorities there was no litter at all, so clearly they were not making effective use of the powers they have.

Furthermore, there were only 1,796 successful prosecutions of fly-tipping in 2006-07, which works out as a 1 in 1,460 chance of being brought to book. This is not a great deterrent to this particular type of crime.

We need to see more proactive measures to tackle people who are littering and fly-tipping. It is important for us to educate and incentivise people and encourage them not to drop litter but it is also very important that the powers that are available are used.

Question: Since its launch in April, this campaign has been raised with MPs and Lords, including through a parliamentary reception in June. How important is parliamentary/government support to this campaign?

Ben Stafford: It is very important. We were very pleased with the reception that we held in June. It was well attended by senior representatives from the government, Conservative and Liberal Democrat front benches. The reception was addressed by Jonathan Shaw the Defra minister who is responsible for litter policy.

We would like to see more government leadership on litter, as well as support for local authorities in taking action of the kind that I have suggested.

In fairness to the government, there has been progress from them recently on litter-related issues. There was the announcement in the Budget that they would legislate to impose a charge on plastic bag use if supermarkets did not voluntarily take measures and I think that will help in terms of reducing the amount of plastic bag litter in the environment.

We also know that the government is reconsidering the idea of bottle deposit schemes that reward people by reimbursing them with money if they return used bottles. This is a scheme we pushed very hard for at the launch of our campaign based on Bill Bryson’s experience of similar schemes in America.

There are further measures that we would also like to see introduced. The government was recently piloting a 101 number, which would allow people to report various kinds of low level crime, including litter and fly-tipping.

Central government funding for that number is now not going to be forthcoming so it has fallen back on local partnerships such as local authorities and police authorities to take that forward.

CPRE would like to see more central direction and support for such schemes so that people can report these types of crimes and actually have them dealt with.

Thinking beyond the government, we also think the opposition parties have a role to play by ensuring that dealing with litter and fly-tipping is a central part of their environmental policy platforms.

Question: What can MPs and Lords do to support your campaign?

Ben Stafford: In terms of what individual MPs and peers can do to support the campaign they can help by keeping the pressure on government in a variety of different ways.

They can contact us for ideas for parliamentary questions and contributions to debates. We are currently working with a number of MPs on questions to the government on a variety of issues relating to litter and fly-tipping. They can also press ministers on what action they are taking to provide leadership and support to local authorities in enforcing the legislation that already exists.

Opposition MPs can push their own party leaderships to bring forward measures and policies to deal with litter and fly-tipping. We were encouraged to see that the Quality of Life report produced by the Conservative Party last year mentioned issues such as bottle deposit laws. We would like to see how that kind of aspiration is translated into policy commitments in the future.

One thing that MPs can do immediately if they have not already done so is to sign our early day motion: 1634. The early day motion on the campaign has cross-party support and will send a clear message that there is wide parliamentary support for this campaign.

They can also encourage their constituents to visit the litteraction website www.litteraction.org.uk, where they can take action and get involved in cleaning up and working in their own area.

Question: To what extent is "Stop the Drop" compatible with the policy pressures and priorities the government is currently facing, for example, the current economic downturn, need for more housing and sustainable business practices?

Ben Stafford: I think it is very compatible. Cleaning up the environment and taking pride in our surroundings are fundamental issues which work very well alongside a range of other political priorities.

Reductions in the amount of litter and fly-tipping will mean reduced clean-up bills. I mentioned earlier the amount of money that local authorities spend each year to clean up litter and fly-tipping and reducing the amount we spend is a positive outcome in these hard economic times.

This will allow local authorities to concentrate on other priorities and other spending areas. The campaign is also an opportunity for businesses to show leadership in tackling the litter they generate. There are also wider benefits in terms of natural resource use. By producing less litter and recycling more, we are using fewer natural resources at a time when there is clearly more pressure on them.

I think the Stop the Drop campaign has a lot of compatibility with a range of areas and there are connections to many areas of policy which again demonstrates why this is an important area.

Question: Do you have any final comments for ePolitix.com readers?

Ben Stafford: We would be delighted to get as many MPs as possible supporting the early day motion and encouraging their constituents to visit the litteraction website. We will continue to keep people up to date with what we are doing during the campaign through our own website which is www.cpre.org.uk, so I would urge people visiting the ePolitix.com site to visit the CPRE website and find out more about what we are doing and how they can contribute to the campaign.