Why educating children is key to stopping the blight of litter
Schools can join battle to Clean Up Yorkshire
EMBEDDING AN anti-littering ethos into children while they are young is key to solving Yorkshire’s litter problem – and we want schools to get involved and help us to Clean Up Yorkshire.
The Yorkshire Post launched the Clean Up Yorkshire campaign on Saturday after revealing the region’s local authorities spent £77.1m on street cleansing in 2013/14 – up from £68.7m in 2008/09.
In partnership with the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), we are encouraging schools to organise clean-up events throughout June, and let us know how much litter is collected.
The CPRE’s LitterAction.org. uk website includes a pack for primary schools and information for secondary schools, such as advice on assemblies and lesson ideas.
Stop the Drop campaign manager for the CPRE, Samantha Harding, said ingraining the message that littering was wrong while children are young was key.
“Littering is very much a societal thing. In countries like Australia, which has a strong anti-littering ethos, it is simply something you do not do,” she said.
“Yorkshire is spending £77m a year cleaning up – this figure needs to drop and it will take societal change to do that.”
But while in some senses young children are easy to encourage, she said keeping them focused on not littering once they have become teenagers is the real challenge.
She said: “Peer pressure, hormones and access to their own money so they can buy what they like, such as energy drinks and chips after school, means that the rate of littering in that age range will increase considerably.”
One school leading the way is Bankside Primary School in Harehills, Leeds. It has run various activities to encourage pupils to have pride and responsibility over their area, including a Magpie scheme where children have to apply for and are interviewed to become litter pickers, working with the school’s caretaking team.
Children were also involved in a community clean-up where pupils went out into the streets surrounding the school to pick up litter, with the support of Leeds Council and the Environment Agency. They were even able to see enforcement in action when the officer discovered bags of rubbish that had been illegally fly-tipped and was able to identify the culprit and issue an on-the -spot fine.
Assistant headteacher Kauser Jan said: “During the cleanup, parents started coming out of their houses with bags and sweeping brushes and joining in, it was fantastic.
“But our efforts are much more than one day. We now have 25 Magpies, who take great pride in going about school and looking after our community.
“If you want to make a impact on children, it has to be something that is sustainable, and that is what we have created at Bankside.”
Bankside’s Magpies will be keeping track of how much litter they collect throughout June for the Clean Up Yorkshire campaign.
Also collecting will be Otley Street Nursery School in Skipton.
It has recently been awarded a Green award from Keep Britain Tidy Eco-Schools programme for the efforts it is making to teach the children about environmental issues, including ensuring every one of its 70 pupils has the opportunity to take part in a litter pick, and learn about what can be recycled.
Teacher Christina Birtley said: “We want to reinforce the message while they are young, to care for our world. It’s good for them to feel part of their community and see they can make a difference.”
I’VE OFTEN heard British visitors to Disneyworld in Florida remark on how clean and litter-free it is. So would places in the UK be, but people discard litter like confetti because they don’t care. And most other people don’t seem to be perturbed – otherwise it wouldn’t happen.
My previous parish was next door to a primary school and the first thing parents would do on collecting their kids was give them crisps or sweets, and the first thing the kids would do was drop the empty crisp bags and sweets wrappers on the ground as they walked along.
Of course, the parents didn’t stop them or tell them to pick them up again and so they would blow under the bushes in my garden where, eventually, enough litter accumulated to fill a bin bag which on one occasion I duly presented to the head teacher but to no avail.
Singapore has a reputation for being immaculately litter-free and that’s because even a discarded cigarette incurs a fine of $300. Dropping any litter bigger than that results in a $1,000 fine or 12 hours of community service and having to wear a bright orange sweater declaring the wearier to be a litterer. The fine goes up to $5,000 for a repeat offence. The problem created by discarded chewing gum had presumably become so bad that the sale of gum was made illegal.
That’s the way to do it – that and strict policing.
Back in this country we continue to trash our town centres, our neighbourhoods and our countryside.
As a society, we seem not to mind everywhere being “decorated” with strewn litter, nor picking our way around dog excrement and pools of vomit (I apologise for being so graphic but that’s the reality).
Why does someone devouring a latenight takeaway, having passed numerous litter bins, then decide to drop the container wherever they happen to be at the time? Who do they think is going to pick it up – the tooth fairy?
Of course they are probably so boozedup that they don’t care, but a Singapore-like £1,000 fine would make it a very expensive takeaway and might just make them think next time.
I think I related once before in these pages the story of my friend who was so fed up with discarded pizza boxes that he went to the see the owner of the pizzeria and, tongue-in-cheek, asked if he could make his pizzas about two inches larger so that by the time people came to the last bite they would have passed his house and the boxes would end up in someone else’s garden!
We hear of the very commendable actions of dedicated individuals and groups of residents who commit themselves to picking up behind the litterers, but isn’t it sad that, as a society, we make that necessary? What is the mentality of someone who disposes of their rubbish by throwing it out of their car window? Throwing anything from a moving vehicle is against the law anyway and so is littering. What makes them think it doesn’t matter if they trash the environment for everyone else?
When I was living in Whitby, I would see visitors eating fish and chips and then leave their wrappers and drinks bottles where they had been sitting – and in some cases quite close to a litter bin which remained unused (by them at least).
If they had arrived in the town to find it looking like a tip, they would have been the first to complain, but they don’t mind leaving it like a tip for others. I have a “tip” for them – stay at home.
What is the mentality of someone with a pick-up truck full of building rubble, broken domestic appliances, old tyres, possibly even carcinogenic asbestos waste, fully intending to dump it somewhere where it becomes someone else’s problem – even a risk to people’s health?
They know it’s against the law but they don’t care. They know it turns the countryside into a garbage dump but they don’t care. They know it’s unbelievably anti-social but they don’t care.
They also know someone else will have to come along and clear up the mess they have created but they don’t care.
If it costs to use the local tip, then why not simply charge the person whose rubbish it was and dispose of it properly, legally, safely and with due regard for the countryside and the environment?
It’s the unpunished dropping of crisp bags and sweet wrappers as a child, that becomes the discarding of cigarette ends and chewing gum, that becomes the scattering of takeaway boxes, that becomes the lawless fly-tipping that blights our countryside.
Effective lessons need to be taught to those who don’t care, on behalf of those of us who do.
If they had arrived in the town to find it looking like a tip, they would have been the first to complain, but they don’t mind leaving it like a tip for others. I have a ‘tip’ for them – stay
at home.