Clean Up UK (our army of litter-picking volunteers!)

Clean Up UK is our national organisation for litter-picking volunteers. Join your local group or start one up with support, and find lots of helpful resources and litter-picking tools on-site.

Since the invention of plastic (made from oil), most places struggle with thrown away single-use plastic, fast food litter or crisp and sweet packets.

Or course it’s disheartening, if your streets are soon covered in trash again. So it also pays to look at solutions, to prevent people littering at source. This also keeps children, pets and wildlife safe from plastic waste and broken glass.

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!

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

Don’t ‘wishcycle!

This is the name given for when people get confused by all the different recycling rules and just ‘pop it in the recycling bin’, to hope for the best. But today most sorting is done by machines, so wishcycling can contaminate a whole batch, and prevent it from being recycled. If in doubt, just bin it.

How to report litter

No matter who dropped it, councils are responsible for clearing litter on public land (report to Fix My Street). On private land, they can litter abatement orders (and issues fines if not cleared).

Neat Streets Free Litter Toolkit

Neat Streets Litter Toolkit is free to download for volunteers and councils, from the wonderful folks at Hubbub. It includes info on why people drop litter (and how to stop them – finger-wagging apparently increases littering by 10%). And the best inventions to keep communities litter-free (including its own range of snazzy colourful bins). It also has free resources to stop roadside litter.