Join the campaign and make a difference
RUBBISH strewn across beaches, carpets of detritus left behind in city centres, discarded packaging dumped in parks for someone else to deal with.
These are all scenes that have become too familiar during the easing of coronavirus restrictions in the UK but which have their root in a much more long-term problem - Britain’s litter epidemic.
Today we are standing up to it, and urging you to do the same, with our new campaign Don’t Trash Our Future.
Gloucestershire Live, together with the local community and information platform Inyourarea.co.uk and our nationwide network of sister newspapers and websites, has teamed up with Clean Up Britain.
We want to push for changes we believe will leave no choice but for both irresponsible litter louts and the authorities who have the power to enforce the law but so often don’t, to take long-lasting action.
Our campaign has two aims: To increase the maximum punishment for littering to a £1,000 fine or 100 hours of supervised community litter picking.
To make it compulsory for local authorities to enforce the law on littering.
We are urging you to sign our petition with the aim of reaching 100,000 signatures so we can lobby the Government to change the legislation and shed the country of its long-held reputation as a litter-plagued nation.
We’re also calling on councils to flex their muscles in the fight against rubbish and make far better use of the powers they already have available. It comes as a series of incidents of flytipping have blighted some of the most attractive parts of Gloucestershire this year alone.
They have included chemical containers being dumped off the A417 near Maisemore, building waste left on Leckhampton Hill and rubbish left in a lane in Bentham.
In June, thoughtless or careless people left huge amounts of litter in Montpellier Gardens in Cheltenham after warm weather socialising. And on Sunday, household waste was found dumped in a grass verge in Sunnyfield Lane in Up Hatherley, Cheltenham. All of those incidents came after Gloucestershire Live staff did their bit to help the environment last summer.
We gave up our own time over a series of weekends to pick up litter in places such as Great Western Road in Gloucester and Gardners Lane in Cheltenham as part of our Keep Gloucestershire Glorious campaign.
A Freedom of Information request sent by Clean Up Britain to 169 councils in England and Wales found the majority (56 per cent) were issuing less than one fine per week for littering and more than two dozen (16 per cent) don’t issue fines at all.
In a recent survey conducted by Inyourarea.co.uk, more than 7,500 respondents overwhelmingly said littering has a negative effect on them and their neighbourhoods and classed it as a big problem.
Sign the petition at inyourarea.co. uk/news/dont-trash-our-future/