Megalania

A lot of you complain about litter and the like in Britain.

Doesn't Britain have a "Keep Britain Beautiful" organisation like the Keep Australia Beautiful organisation?



In Aus, up to the late 1950's people would toss rubbish out of cars and on streets etc. Then the "Keep Australia Beautiful" slogan was advertised with government sponsorship. People started to put rubbish bins and bags in their cars, community groups would patrol the roads picking up the accumulated rubis like beer bottles etc. Now there are regular Clean Up Australia days and events.

wmoore

There is a campaign that has been going for years but it's not really active these days. I remember as a kid TV adverts for this but now all that exists is a logo on sweet wrappers and drinks cans showing a stick man throwing his rubbish in a bin and the words Keep Britain Tidy.
It's all about education though. Kids are growing up now having never been told to keep where you live and where you go tidy so that it's nice for the next guy. In fact, nobody seems to care about the next guy at all.
Sad but true.

debio

Sorry don't agree with that.
I'm a primary school teacher and our school has been given awards for keeping the school and community environment clean.The children understand the litter problem.Know how to keep the enviroment tidy.Know the dangers to wildlife etc from littering.
We have udertaken many projects on how to improve the environment and acted upon them with the help and support of the local council. :lecture:


So maybe the children in your area are not educated in this way-but ours are and ok it doesn't always show-but there are conscientious kids out there.

anya4oz

Good on you, Debio!

I wish you could come & educate the kids where I live. Some days it seems like the whole of the UK's litter quota is dumped in my hedge.

And it's all sweets & junk food cans/plastic wrappers/cartons, too. I woudn't mind them chucking apple cores, banana skins etc...

Oh yes, and they also pee in my hedge, too.

Please help. Am so desperate have even thought about wiring the hedge up to the mains

Anya.

wmoore

OK I made a generalisation - and wasn't pointing any fingers at teachers, as I believe this sort of education is primarily the responsibility of the parent. The kids around me seem to have no respect for the environment, people or property and that saddens me.
I am pleased to see that some people are taking environmental issues seriously though. I'm not a raving Green but I do think we need to take a little more care, and stopping littering is a simple thing we can all do to make the world a nicer place :lecture:

wmoore

LOL! Let me know how that works out. I've been threatening to do the same with my fence at the back.

HiddenPaw

I commend Australia on it's 'Keep Australia Beautiful' policy. However, littering and fly tipping is a big problem in Oz as much as it is in UK. Take a look at the streets of any CBD...they are paved with cigarette butts and McDonalds wrappers. And since local authorities in many towns started charging people to use the local tip, fly tipping has increased. The one thing I saw less of in Oz was dog muck.

I also commend Australia on its 'adopt-a-highway' policy......where a local group (e.g. Lions CLub) will adopt a section of highway and commit to keeping it litter free. It's a great scheme but such a shame that it has to exist in the first place.

One day when I was feeling particularly riled by an Aussie who had flicked his fag butt at my feet I asked him if he considered it to be litter...his response was 'yes, but there's no bins'. I pointed out a bin 4ft away from him and he replied that he wasn't prepared to get wet for the sake of putting it in a bin (it was raining). Sadly it's the people who are the same the world over...total disregard for their surroundings. Aussies are no different to Brits in this respect.

I have watched parents flick fag butts into the lake at the Botanical Gardens (Melbourne) whilst their children are beside them and I saw a guy flick his lit fag butt into the crocodile pen at an Aussie wildlife park, with 3 young kids in tow. What sort of examples are these to set today's youngsters? You can have all the policies inthe world to make things better, but if the parents are doing this in front of their children, things seem unlikely to improve?

What people don't realise is that if they didnt' litter as much, their council tax bills and rates bills would be less as they wouldn't have to fund such a huge cleanup programme.

dotty

I think people are forgetting how most bushfires start, people throwing fag butts out of car windows. Its ignorant to say the least but you see it all the time, litter that kills

As for dumping rubbish, we live at the end of a very long quiet street with houses few and far between. Ive lost track of how often someone will pull up with a trailer of rubbish!! and just tip it out, broad daylight sometimes but usually happens in the middle of the night.

People are the same everywhere.

Grayling

I once drove the Bruce highway from Brisbane to Cairns.
You would not believe the amount of litter to be found in any layby or stopping place. Not to mention the Human Sh*t!!!
This is not just a British problem

G

sjn2003

As I live in London, I think I must win the prize for living in the biggest open rubbish dump in the UK. I think it is definitely down to education and this must come from the parents.

On our recent visit to Sydney, the streets were definitely much cleaner - partly due to the council spending money to clean them up - something that seems to be the first thing cut in London.

Also, like the recycling effort with most bin sites we saw

Megalania

The only time I have seen noteworthy litter recently was at a layby on the Eyre Highway near Port Augusta. But then I rarely travel tramelled roads.

My theory: Rubbish attracts rubbish - people see some litter and are then less inclined to "Do The Right Thing" since their extra litter makes little percieved difference.

debio

Anya,
I wouldn't go for the electric fence myself-as the smell of burning flesh is like someone roasting a pig-it ain't so good hun!

mr mover

And we have a 5cent deposit on most drink containers, in our state , this rubbish must have been left by, Wankers from the eastern states travelling to perth ................... MM

debio

I know you were. it's just that there are so many great environmental programmes linked through schools and counties and so many people doing a good job.

I'm no green fanatic myself and i grew up thinking there was nothing wrong with throwing my sweet wrappers out of the car window--until i was old enough to know better.I'd never been told any different-others did it so i did it.

But i'd go ape-shit if i saw my kids do the same now-not that they would-they're far too respectful.

:lecture: --it's a bit of a bee in the bonnet for me as you can see

Don

There are a few honourable exceptions. I could name New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and Austria where the locals don't litter and will often reprimand litterers.