MODERN FAMILY
WHAT has happened that makes people think that it is acceptable to drop litter and expect other people to pick it up for them during a global pandemic? How have we become a society of “why should I bother when someone else will pick it up”?
Lockdown seems to have brought out the worst in some people if the scenes of rubbish that were thoughtlessly left behind after mass gatherings in places like Cardiff Bay and Ogmore-by-the-Sea were anything to go by last week.
Dropping litter is a particular bugbear. My strong feelings definitely originate somewhere in my childhood; littering makes me irrationally angry for reasons even I’m not sure about.
When we were growing up in the 1980s there was a massive emphasis on not being a litter lout, there was a big education campaign and it was something that was seen as antisocial and a big no-no.
It has left me playing out scenarios in my head about going up to people who have dropped some litter, tapping them on the shoulder and saying: “Hey, I think you dropped something”.
To the embarrassment of my children, I have actually done precisely that recently on the school run when I saw some schoolchildren drop ice cream wrappers on the ground.
Prepared for a barrage of abuse when I stopped them, they actually sheepishly turned round and picked it up before going quietly on their way.
But that was only the one time, they were young enough to be my children and the red Irish mist made me blurt it out. The reality is that I am not always brave enough to tell the litterbugs that they’re wrong, that they should respect their – our – streets, respect our planet and stop dropping crisp packets, cigarette butts, lager cans, whatever, on the floor.
It has been a growing problem with scenes of mountains of mess left behind on beaches, at beauty spots and just metres away from the heart of the Senedd. Maybe people think they can get away with it because resources are being directed in other directions, but at the end of the day someone has to tidy up the mess that has selfishly been left behind.
Treating the world and your surroundings as a bin is disrespectful to everyone and everything around you. Expecting someone else to put their life at risk to pick it up, is completely selfish.
Mabye we should be more like the authorities in Hong Kong, who create E-fits of the face of the litterbug created from the DNA on their rubbish and project the images on to billboards, or we should back or push for the idea that customers’ number plates be printed on fast food bags so people who throw the empty packing out of the car window can be traced.
It is a shame that at a time when resources are already stretched, we have to work out what we are going to do about the louts who are blighting our beautiful country.