Echo Comment on the wave of littering following the heatwave

It is estimated that 730m bits of rubbish are dropped as litter every year in the UK. Just this weekend alone, Keep Britain Tidy (KBT) estimates that motorists will toss out three million pieces onto the roads, and there are barely verges anywhere in the country that do not sprout takeaway boxes or drinks cartons.

Littering is a distinctly different problem to fly-tipping, and Government data suggests that it 2024 there were more than 1.1m reports of rubbish being dumped illegally – that’s 3,157 reports every day, which is one every 27 seconds. Which is staggering.

Why do we use our coasts and countryside as a waste bin – and, as a KBT survey found 49 per cent of adults admitted dropping litter in the previous 12 months, this is a “we” problem?

And is it a peculiarly British problem – travellers on the continent regularly report that verges are spotless and there is a civic pride in keeping town centres tidy?

Is it because our home rubbish collections are too infrequent? Is it because we are being priced out of our local dumps? Is it because there are no longer bobbies on the street or along the prom to growl “pick it up, son” at an offender? Or is it because we are losing our pride in our local neighbourhoods and so don’t care what they look like?

Or is it simply because we are lazy?

Yet 51 per cent don’t drop litter. Perhaps that majority should step up a gear. Womble Claire Hampson says she “decided that I will be the change” and collected 10 bags of litter at Cod Beck on Tuesday. If all 70m of us picked up one piece of litter a day, the mountain of 730m pieces would be gone in a fortnight…