Bill Bryson: Stopping The Litter Bugs

9 March 2009

Think Tank Policy Exchange and the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) will today launch a new report Litterbugs to highlight the blight of littering in Britain, and to propose new means of cracking down on those responsible.

Since the 1960s the amount of litter dropped annually has shot up by 500 per cent, and local authorities are now left to foot a bill of an estimated £500 million a year to clean it up. Alongside these costs, companies in heavily littered areas are losing business, and rubbish adds to an air of neglect in local communities, contributing towards increasing crime rates and anti-social behaviour.

Bill Bryson, President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said:

"This report identifies the lack of any systematic logic in enforcement policy. Fines are an essential enforcement tool, and one which needs to be applied far more consistently than is currently the case.

"As this report also says, we need community buy-in to the fight against litter; we must build civic pride in clean and tidy environments, with communities competing to be spotless. Only then can we stop the exasperating and routine vandalism of a country so rich in natural, cultural and built heritage."

Ben Caldecott, Head of Policy Exchange's Environment and Energy Unit, commented:

"We know what works from abroad, where schemes have cut littering rates by up to 80 per cent, and we know there are simple, cheap measures like the provision of more bins that can easily and quickly be put in place. Taking a few simple steps would reduce the clean-up costs that local authorities currently face.

"Over time, if we better educate people and stop the perception that litter is somehow ‘someone else's problem', then we can get to the root causes of this blight on our towns and countryside."

Using polling, psychological experiments and drawing on examples of effective prevention from Australia and America, as well as analysis of national and regional data, today's report, Litterbugs, includes in its recommendations:

· The creation of a national body to coordinate anti-littering initiatives, campaigns and programmes

· The introduction of a deposit scheme - New York State's experience with a deposit scheme has been overwhelmingly positive, the most tangible evidence of this being high levels of public support and dramatic falls in container and drive-by litter.

· Taking account of litter and littering behaviour in the design of our public spaces - an intelligent approach to designing public spaces, bins and systems can yield reductions in littering without any increase in funding.

· Greater consistency in the application of penalties for littering across local authorities - too few local authorities fine, with only a small minority utilising the fining options available to them. There is also a tendency for fines not be given to the worst offenders, such as young urban males, as wardens perceive them to be a threatening and dangerous.

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