There was a good column in The Times recently about the state of Britain's roadsides, which frequently are liberally strewn with litter.
It suggested that we get serious about cleaning it up. Any campaign to get that done would receive my support, too. But I don't know that we should feel quite so much shame about litter's existence as we sometimes do. I bet that, fly-tipping aside, most of it gets there by accident.
I can't place a bin bag outside my front door late at night to carry it to the wheelie bin at the end of the lane in the morning because by then a rat or a crow will have taken a few chunks out of the bag and everything inside will have started blowing around the garden.
And there's a lay-by down the road from me where I often see black bags left poking from the top of the wheelie bins. I'm sure the intent is good, but it's not likely to end well, given that Britain is a windy island in the North Atlantic with plenty of scavenging wildlife.
Similar bin-cramming happens in town centres; stuff is placed near the top of those bins that have an opening on both sides, creating the perfect wind tunnel for sucking lightweight rubbish precariously placed in them.
So by all means let's get Britain's roads tidy again, but at the same time let's make a plan to prevent it going wrong again.
Often it's thoughtlessness over malice. So let's have more bins, better designed, more frequently emptied and with big signs about not overfilling them. And make local amenity tips free again, too.
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There's a bigger pollution problem coming out of exhaust pipes, but of course The Times doesn't like to criticise the oil industry who advertise in its pages and currently control power in the 'establishment'. Change is coming though.
So we're supposed to believe that all that litter lining motorways in the middle of the countryside is due to animals getting in to bins and windy weather? If you'll pardon the pun Matt, you're talking absolute garbage. It is lazy, irresponsible ***** launching stuff out of their windows!
COVID?, for the past few years and certainly at the start people were loath to get out of there cars even to put there rubbish in bins in public areas,yes they could've taken it home,,but most didn't, the reason there's rubbish nearly everywhere is the parents of the current generation not teaching there kids to bin there rubbish.
Too many people with a complete lack of respect for where they live combined with authorities that are pretty useless in sorting these things out.
just come back from Florida. driven hundreds of miles and we were only saying how there is a complete lack of roadside litter. I'd see more driving 1/100th the distance at home.
what gets me most is where I live, people clearly just throw there McDonald's away when walking home after a night out. Literally on the streets they live on, on their neighbours properties.
hard to fathom.