Campaign for Rural England's Stop The Drop

Hot on the heels of Radio Suffolk's Don't be a Tosser campaign, comes the CPRE's (Campaign for Rural England) Stop The Drop, which is targeting both litter louts and fly-tippers.

Reported on BBC's Breakfast news this morning, the CPRE is also urging government to introduce a 10p deposit charge on plastic bottles, in the hope that consumers will return bottles, which will leave the UK's litter-louts and non-recyclers penalised by the extra charge. According to the BBC report, the average household uses 500 plastic bottles a year but only 100 of these get reycled. It is thought that the extra charge would encourage people to see plastic bottles as as resource and return them.

There will be sceptics who will doubt the effectiveness of such a scheme if it were introduced, but the enterprising mother in me is already thinking about the extra pocket money my kids could earn or indeed the fundraising opportunities for our local school, if we hold an organised litter pick.

However what it could mean for households with excellent kerbside collection service that includes plastic bottles, is that active recyclers would also be penalised unless they returned the bottles back to the collection point, giving them yet another thing to think about. Is that fair? Would I get a £50 reduction in my council tax, for making the extra effort to take back my 500 bottles, which I already recycle? I don't think so. Oh dear, maybe I am one of those sceptics after all.

Oh such dilemmas. I'm just glad I am a mere blogger and not a law-maker.

However, as a consumer I welcome the suggestion and there is evidence that bottle deposit schemes work elsewhere. If you are interested, more information can be found at: www.thebottlebill.co.uk, www.litterheroes.co.uk and www.bottlebill.org.

Anyway, this headline should not detract from the rest of the CPRE's Stop The Drop campaign, which is spear-headed by Bill Bryson, and is encouraging individuals to take action. To see how you can get involved, pop over to the following webpage:

www.cpre.org.uk/campaigns/stop-the-drop/litter-and-fly-tipping/litter-take-action

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Litter picking in Suffolk

(Photo: Copyright Flickr's hey mr glen)

I'd like to give a big thumbs up to Radio Suffolk's Mark Murphy for highlighting the issue of litter louts in Suffolk, with his Don't be a Tosser campaign. He's even put his money where his mouth is and has been out picking up litter that has been tossed around the county.

Now I really don't like the word "tosser", but I find it very appropriate in the context of all those people who drop bags of litter out from their cars whilst travelling around our beautiful county, or indeed whilst walking around our streets.

A report in today's East Anglian Daily Times revealed that an estimated 25 million tonnes of rubbish a year is dropped on UK roads. Apparently that's the size of 62,500 jumbo jets. With the amount of litter having increased by 500% since the 1960s, councils across the UK are now spending £500 million a year on cleaning up our trunk roads.

In Suffolk, operators are having to deal with anything from plastic waste and food remnants through to discarded underwear and bottles of urine. How horrible.

I'd like to reassure you that Suffolk is much more pleasant than this image portrays, but it is a problem that needs addressing in our local county and elsewhere in the UK. Not only does it make for an unpleasant sight, but it is a waste of resource both in manpower and in recycling opportunities, all of which leads to higher taxes.

The great news is that the organisation Suffolk:Creating the greenest county is raising awareness of the issue through its SUFFOLK SPRING CLEAN campaign, where it is inviting individuals and local organisations to organise a litter pick during the fortnight 31st March - 13 April 2008.

To get involved all you need to do is ring up your local council officers, who will be happy to help and will loan out relevant safety equipment. A list of officers can be found here. If you're taking part, remember that Mark Murphy at Radio Suffolk would like to hear from you. So drop him a line at mark.murphy@bbc.co.uk.

I'm up for a litter picking session in Bury St Edmunds, especially in Moreton Hall. So if you're up for joining me, just drop me a line at enquiries@therubbishdiet.co.uk. The more the merrier!
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