The Times - UK (2020-06-29)

Welby must look to future,

not fuss over past

Trevor Phillips

Page 22

at such tactics, seeing them as a bit

Singaporean and authoritarian for

freedom-loving England — but is

it perhaps our live-and-let-live

attitudes that have helped bring us

to this dirty pass in the first place?

Young people must experience this

problem in a hands-on way, too.

Teenagers and young people are the

worst culprits for littering (not a

curmudgeonly assumption but fact).

Exhorting them to behave more

considerately through dry,

textbook-style education on the

environment isn’t going to work.

They need to learn the habits of

cleanliness, order and responsibility.

In Japan, schoolchildren must ensure

their desk and wider classroom are

immaculate before they can go. Why

can’t we have this kind of discipline

in British schools, along with regular

litter picks from local areas?

In addition, install more bins;

empty said bins more regularly (the

litter bins of the Swiss capital Bern

are emptied up to ten times daily);

encourage supermarkets to pioneer

more reusable packaging and slash

packaging in general; revive the idea

of a 25p “latte levy” on single-use

coffee cups (stopped by the

government last year); hold

Highways England to account for the

mess by the motorways.

Britain’s litter problem can be

desperately dispiriting — and now,

in the manner of the canniest

fly-tippers, we must throw the

kitchen sink, mattress and fridge

freezer at it. National cleanliness is at

issue, but national pride is at stake.

Let’s throw everything at Britain’s litter problem

Detritus of post-lockdown parties shames us all but instead of asking people nicely to clear up, we need to compel them

£500 for a first offence, which would

be a serious deterrent (though

doubling the current ceiling fine to

£300 seems hefty enough to me).

Most importantly, fines must be

enforced. Why not have litter

wardens on crowded summer

beaches and parks, like parking

wardens? Another good idea would

be to require fast food drive-throughs

to print the car’s registration number

on all packaging, so that the

milkshake cup lobbed out of the

car window comes back to bite.

For repeat offenders there should

be community service, as they have

in enlightened California: 24 hours of

roadside litter picking for a third

offence. Nothing is more likely to

make the selfish see the light than

hours with a litter-picking claw in

hand, in all weathers. Some will balk

Recent litter such as that on Brighton

beach confirms a national problem

Litter is poisonous to morale, too.

A pile of junk in a beautiful place is

not only an eyesore but a heartsore,

evidence that others think manners

and civility are for mugs. The

American humorist David Sedaris

(who now lives in Britain and is a

devoted litter-picker) captures well

the rage of the non-littering masses:

“Why should anyone have to live in

a teenager’s bedroom? It’s bad for

your spirit... to have to walk through

filth is no way to live.”

In many other nations this issue is

recognised as important to national

pride, and is treated accordingly.

German shopkeepers are required by

law to keep the pavements in front of

their premises litter-free. In Canada,

fines for littering are eye-watering;

Calgary, the world’s cleanest city,

takes $750 from those caught

dropping a cigarette out of a car

window. Leave a sweet wrapper on

the floor in squeaky Singapore and

risk a $300 fine. The godfather of the

city state, Lee Kwan Yew, was

relentless in his quest for cleanliness

because he believed it would “keep

morale high... and so create the

necessary social conditions for

higher economic growth”. It’s the

unbroken windows theory; clean

streets lead to pride, higher

aspirations and, ultimately,

greater prosperity.

Litter matters, but what can we

do? Anti-littering campaigns are the

usual answer but seeing the volume

of rubbish last week, they seem

inadequate. If people are

thick-headed enough to leave their

KFC cartons on the grass in the first

place, I doubt that a strongly-worded

poster will get through. Instead of

simply asking people to do the right

thing, we must force them to do it.

On-the-spot-fines must be much

higher. The think tank Bright Blue

recently suggested a minimum of

O

h, to be in England,

Now that July’s

nearly there,

And whoever wakes

in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the verges are blooming

with Costa cups

and the ground is soft with

ciggie butts,

While the chip-wrapper clings

to the orchard bough

In England — now!

The end-of-lockdown bacchanals

that took place last week were

unedifying in many ways — the

drunkenness, the brawling, the

selfishness of those who would waste

the last three months of national

sacrifice to enjoy a square foot of

beach — but most dispiriting to me

was the detritus left behind: beaches

and beauty spots dotted for miles

with beer bottles, McDonald’s

cartons, sweet wrappers, soiled

nappies, plastic bags.

At Sandbanks there were used

sanitary towels and hundreds of gas

canisters. A litter pick at Morecambe

beach yielded 25 black sacks of

waste. Three tonnes of litter at

Durdle Door, twelve tonnes left on

Bournemouth beach in a single day.

Some people had defecated in burger

boxes and left them. On Port

Meadow in Oxford, the “deluge of

litter” left five horses and ten cows

needing treatment for glass cuts;

another cow is dead, having eaten

plastic bags and balloons.

Last week’s plastic carnage was not

some aberration but confirmation

that Britain’s litter problem is truly

dire. According to the Hygiene

Council, ours is the dirtiest

developed country in the world.

About 122 tonnes of cigarette-related

litter are dropped every day. Councils

spend hundreds of millions a year

clearing it all up — too late for the

creatures who die as a result of the

pollution. The RSPCA receives

about 5,000 calls a year about

litter-related injuries to animals. Our

rivers, lakes and seas have become

a soup of plastic particles; at the

last count there were an average of

358 items of litter per square

kilometre of seabed.

An army of litter-pickers do

sterling work but, alas, the task is

Sisyphean. The stuff grows and

grows, a pullulating swarm of

kebab wrappers and Fanta cans.

Behavioural scientists have observed

that the strongest predictor of

littering is litter. The sight of a plastic

bag dancing in the wind suggests

it is OK to lob your crisp packet into

the hedge. This accretion of rubbish

then suggests our common spaces

are ripe for further trashing.

In the 1980s the American

academics James Q Wilson and

George L Kelling introduced the

“broken windows theory”, which

holds that when an environment is

run-down people are more likely

to deface it further. Dereliction

deepens. Litter breeds litter. The

air of abandonment signals to

criminals that here is a place to

vandalise or steal from.

When an environment

is already run-down

people deface it further

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the times | Monday June 29 2020 1GM 21