I am sure you have all done it at some point in your life, whether you sneakily dropped your used tissue, or cigarette butt, or even tossed a plastic bottle from the car as you drove by. Though your one tissue may seem harmless, it is estimated that a shocking £1 billion is spent every year by councils in the UK to deal with the problem of littering.
An estimated 62% of people in the UK drop litter, with 28% of these admitting to the crime. On a larger scale, an incident of fly tipping occurs every 12 seconds, resulting in a shameful thirty million tonnes of rubbish littering our streets every year. This is not only unsightly, but has a negative impact on the environment, harming animals and damaging plants and trees. A street strewn with litter is a miserable sight, and is unpleasant for the local residents who have to live in the area.
A group of residents in Chelsfield have taken it upon themselves to help shoulder the responsibility of keeping their local area clean. Every two months they meet up at Warren Road to pick up litter in the surrounding area. The group has been litter picking for approximately six years, with about a dozen regular members. I interviewed Brian who helps run the group. He told me that whilst the council take care of the bigger issues they don’t really help with the litter picking in the woods; ‘we have to live in the area so we take care of it ourselves.’ However, the council do supply the grabbers and all the gear necessary to clean up the litter, and arrange for the collection of the rubbish bins.
On Saturday I joined the group in litter picking, and was shocked by the state of some of the paths. They were covered with cigarette butts while numerous dogs’ waste bags were scattered around the foliage. Between the sixteen of us present at the litter picking we filled more than ten bags of litter, a dreadful amount of waste that has been ruining the appearance of the streets. The litter we collected included multiple used nappies, some car number plates and even a dead fox in a plastic bag. Brian told me about some of the things he had come across whilst litter picking: ‘One of the strangest things I have found was a safe.’
Although there was a good turnout on Saturday, the group often have a hard time recruiting for the litter picking. Many people think that it is not their responsibility to pick up litter and the most common reason being that it is the council’s job to deal with such issues, as we pay for this service through our council tax.
Unlike many councils, Bromley Council are very supportive of volunteer groups and provide them with advice and resources. In addition, they run a campaign called the ‘Big Bromley Brush Up’, with the aim of cleaning up the worst areas of Bromley, and are trying to find volunteers from the borough to help them do so.
All of us have a responsibility to pick up rubbish within our community; after all we are the ones who endure it. However, the fault lies with those that litter in the first place. If people did not drop rubbish, then volunteers would not have to give up their time to clean up other people’s mess.
Beatrice Elliott, Newstead Wood School
