Join England’s army of litter-picking volunteers

Clean Up UK is a national charity with an army of local litter-picking volunteers. You can join a local group or start one up, using the free help and resources on site. You can also find good litter-picking tools.

It can get disheartening when the litter is cleared, but then comes back again. So working with councils to report litter at Fix My Street is good. It’s actually the council’s responsiblity to clear litter on public land. And for private land, they can serve litter abatement orders (landowners are fined if they don’t clean it up – or councils can clean it up, and then invoice them).

Report environmental crime (and illegal fishing) at Crimestoppers (anonymous).

Neat Streets free litter toolkit

Neat Streets Litter Toolkit is free to download for volunteers and councils. It offers info on why people drop litter and how to stop it (finger-wagging apparently increases littering by 10%).

The best solutions are to have colourful bins and recycling bins in high-traffic areas. And smaller bins everywhere else. It also has free resources to stop roadside litter.

Litter fines only work if they are enforced

The government has recently upped fines for dropping litter and fly-tipping. But it’s always been illegal to drop litter. The problem is that most councils don’t enact the law (some councils issue less than 10 litter fines per year). Which is why some rivers and parks have litter that’s been there years.

In Jaywick (a town near Clacton-on-Sea), there are mattresses on the seafront promenade, the council says it has no money to clean it up. But they could serve litter abatement orders to landowners.

National Highways is responsible for clearing major roadside litter. But Clean Up UK say that they often mow grass verges before clearing up litter, so glass shards fly everywhere. This should be cleared before mowing. Report litter to National Highways.

Plus they say that litter may drift. Say it’s in a field but then drifts onto a railway track. If the railway track is owned by a private company, then they have to stop clearing it and start issuing litter abatement orders. And meanwhile it may drift back on the wind to the field again.

Assuming someone else will clear it up

Near Wigan recently, a massive flytipping pile of rubbish went uncleared for months. It was on private land owned by the Duchy of Lancaster (King Charles). Who had an exemption not to have to clear it up. Despite saying that he would use his power to help communities, the responsibility went back to the taxpayers, as Keir Starmer’s government took responsibility for it.

Did you know that people never drop litter in Japan? Even in areas with no litter bins, it’s the culture to never cause work for other people to clear it up. People even wash the pavements with water, if their dog poops!

In Switzerland, if you drop a crisp packet you’ll be approached by the police to pick it up. And in Japan, nobody drops litter (not even in areas without bins). Litter is taken home (people even carry bottles of water to rinse the pavement, after their dog has pooped).

This is because simply the culture is different. If they don’t pick up litter, someone else will have to. Yet people who complain about rising council tax, are often the very people who are dropping litter, causing taxes to rise.

Before the 1950s, there was no litter in England. It was only after the invention of fast food and plastic that the Keep Britain Tidy campaign began. Today, councils spend around £1 billion in collecting litter, the most common items now being cigarette stubs (people could use pocket ashtray) and disposable vapes (all shops take these back for recycling).