Report Fast Food Litter to Fix My Street
Fed up of seeing fast food litter strewn all over your local town or village? Despite England being absolutely covered in litter, it’s actually illegal to drop it (but the law is not followed through – in Switzerland if you drop so much as a sweet wrapper, a policeman comes to tell you to pick it up).
Litter fines are around £80 (again in Switzerland they rise so if they found those vandals who dumped all that litter in Oxfordshire, they would be fined millions and likely sent to prison).
For now, here’s what you can do. You can report any litter you see to Fix My Street, an open-source website where you can upload reports and photos, using the maps (and ask for updates, if wished).
The difference from reporting litter to your council direct, is that the website sends your complaint to the council, but as it’s made public on the website, something usually gets done. Especially if lots of people complain about the same thing (from litter to potholes to fly-tipping).
What Can Councils Do About Fast Food Litter?
A lot, if they do their job. It could ask fast food outlets to provide more bins (some fast food joints and local supermarkets don’t have bins outside, which they should have considering they sell so much disposable packaging).
No matter who dropped it, it’s your council’s responsibility to clear up litter on public land (paid for by council tax, which is why it’s good to not drop it in the first place).
For private land, councils can serve litter abatement orders, which means the landowners are fined if they don’t clear it up. Or alternatively, the council can clear it, then bill the landowner.
If councils did their jobs properly, we should have litter-free cities, towns and villages everywhere. And considering fast food litter is a big part of this, it makes a good start.
Some fast food restaurants (like London’s Unity Diner which serves vegan food to fund its farm sanctuary) only serves items in compostable packaging, to avoid littering of plastic. So why can’t all the others do that too?
