How much can we spare to stop the drop?

11 February 2010

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) broadly welcomes the findings of Keep Britain Tidy's local environment report released today (Thursday), showing that litter levels have dropped. CPRE's Stop the Drop campaign is working hard to change people's behaviour on litter, so this is an encouraging sign.

But, it has to be asked at what cost have these results been achieved?

Samantha Harding, Stop the Drop campaign manager says:

Keep Britain Tidy suggest that reduced litter levels 'could be an indication councils have improved their overall performance in cleaning up litter'. With the total net cost of street cleansing increasing from £700,146m in 2007/08 to £733,160m in 2008/09, it would seem litter levels will only decrease if taxpayers continue to fund ever-increasing cleansing budgets. In the year to come, when local councils are facing their tightest budgets for a long time, continuing to throw money at the problem just isn't a tenable, long-term solution'.

In addition, the lower levels of overall cleanliness suggest that council workers are so busy clearing up litter, there's less time and money for Local Environmental Quality teams to address other issues such as graffiti and fly-posting.

Community action will also have helped to reduce the amount of litter. CPRE's branch network and the 277 groups on CPRE's LitterAction website have collected over 33,000 bags of rubbish over the past couple of years, playing their part in litter levels falling for a second successive year.

But what will, ultimately, cut litter dramatically and keep it down, is a sustained, long-term high profile behaviour change campaign. CPRE is inviting representatives from the manufacturing and retail industries to support such a campaign by providing funding, expertise and a commitment to ensure their products aren't the ones found 'trapped in hedges' and strewn across our footpaths and roads.

Samantha Harding concluded:

'Most items discarded as litter could be reused or recycled. Those that can't should end their lives in a bin, not on the roadside or in a hedge. We are concerned people aren't getting the wider message that there's an environmental and social disadvantage to litter and we need to wake up to the fact that a net cost of £1.9m a day clearing it up is the biggest waste of all.'

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