Case Studies

Litter strategy

by Mark Rowe

About one in five in Britain drop litter; it costs local government hundreds of millions of pounds a year to clear up after them; and being in a littered place makes people feel less safe. Hence the Government’s first litter strategy, published in April 2017 just before the election campaign before the June 8, 2017 general election.

The 82-page document spoke of delivering ‘a long‑term reduction in the amount of litter that is dropped’, and of the need ‘to reduce the amount of visible litter and address the perception of England as a littered country’. The strategy spoke in terms of culture, of changing the behaviour of those who feel that it is acceptable to drop litter; and hence the need for measurement and monitoring, and behavioural science (‘nudge theory’), besides enforcement and the physical infrastructure of actual bins, and where to site them and what they look like, for as the document pointed out, ‘people drop less litter in clean environments’. Put another way, people drop more in anonymous places for which nobody really feels responsible; such as bus stops, motorway service stations and slip roads.

As for fly-tipping, as the strategy document noted, there may be a fine line between fly-tipping and littering, if someone dumps a plastic sack of rubbish to avoid disposing of the waste properly. What about the Coalition Government’s idea of ‘community payback’, formerly known as ‘community service’ of convicted offenders doing unpaid work in the community, as a visible punishment? The strategy notes that use of litter‑picking (or removing graffiti) as a sanction in itself ‘must be handled with care, to avoid creating a perception that anyone seen litter-picking must be an offender serving a community sentence’. The document suggests instead use of prison labour on private land such as farms, and gives the case of Operation Fly‑Swat in Lincolnshire, a partnership between Boston Borough Council and HMP North Sea Camp; or to address ‘particularly persistent or large‑scale problems’.

Thus while it may be tempting to make the punishment fit the crime – that people dropping litter are made to pick it up, and the strategy does say that ‘those responsible for fly-tipping should be punished by clearing it up’ – the strategy reins back. Likewise it has mixed things to say about enforcement against litter-droppers with fixed penalty notices, typically of £75, though that may go up in the next parliament. The document spoke of wanting to ‘reinforce the social norm against littering and other environmental ‘incivilities”; it pointed to the bad press that fines for dropped litter such as cigarette ends can get, if fines in court seem far higher than fit the crime; or, that councils are using fines for litter to raise revenue from citizens. Echoing a separate debate over fines by councils using CCTV vans against cars breaking parking rules, the strategy says councils should issue fines only ‘when it is in the public interest to do so, and when it is proportionate’. After consultation, the Government intends to issue ‘stronger guidance to enforcement authorities’. Enforcement, in other words, will only deter litter-droppers if the enforcement is done with the ‘public trust’.

Comment

At the charity Keep Britain Tidy, Chief Executive Allison Ogden-Newton welcomed the strategy. She said: “Educating the next generation is vital if we are to win the war on litter. Our children and young people are the key to making littering a thing of the past. Learning about litter and its impacts, as part of their wider environmental education, must be a central pillar of the concerted effort needed to tackle the problem once and for all.”

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