Twice a year I visit the UK to see my family that still live there, in the town I was born, raised, grew up in and started my working life in. Twice a year I get to note the differences between ‘home’ and home. Twice a year I get back ‘home’ with these differences gnawing away at me.
So what are these differences? The biggest, single thing that I’ve noticed is the amount of debris in the streets. That’s what I want to rant about here. Litter not just in the streets, but in the countryside too. Driving through the New Forest, I was absolutely staggered to note just how much rubbish there was strewn around. The ubiquitous New Forest Ponies were grazing at the sides of the roads, little more than country tracks, really, and I couldn’t even begin to count the numbers of plastic pop bottles. Empty crisp packets and plastic wrappers abound. What is that all about? This is a National Treasure, ladies and gentlemen. It’s somewhere to be proud of, to take your kids to, and marvel at the landscape, unchanged in millenia. It isn’t a dumping ground for your unwanted trash. It is a place to be nurtured, looked after and guarded jealously, because there’s nowhere else quite like it.
To take a photo, you have to look through the viewfinder and ‘see’ what else is in the shot. Then you have a choice. You either remove the rubbish strewn around by hand, collecting someone else’s cast-offs, bagging them up to be disposed of in a bin later. Or there’s Photoshop.
I prefer the former.
It wasn’t just the New Forest. Driving on the motorways, I was all too often distracted by the sheer volume of rubbish on the embankments, wondering how on earth it gets there? Do people just throw this stuff out of their car windows as they’re driving merrily along? Do they even stop to think what happens to it? In fact, what DO they think happens to it? Do they imagine an army of elves appearing to ‘magic’ it all away (to the New Forest) in the dead of night? Or, do they just think ‘someone’ else will do their dirty work for them?
A visitors view of a UK town.
Think about this logically. If everyone did as I do, there’d be a fortune saved on collecting this crap which may then go towards something more useful, like putting more policemen on the beat in your towns, or creating a few more beds in your hospitals. It may even go towards better lighting in areas that are targetted by muggers, thieves and rapists in YOUR towns.
So what is it that I do? it’s simple – I just collect MY rubbish and throw it in the passenger side footwell, or I carry a plastic carrier bag for the purpose and use a bin when I stop. Or, as is more usual, when I get home again, and then put MY rubbish in the bin there.
I suppose one of the problems is that there’s simply not enough bins around, and when there are, they’re already overflowing with human detritus. Packaging is one problem – there’s just too much of it. Less blister packed fast food, and more cellophane please? I know that when our eldest son worked for McDonalds for a short time in his youth, they had a rota for staff to scour the immediate environs for litter bearing their name, and to bag it up and bring it back to the store. That’s nice, and a responsible attitude to take. But what about the millions of fast food outlets in every town and city across the land? What’re they doing?
Another problem, and one I have personal experience of, is terrorism. Yes, terrorism. In many airports and train stations, as well as large shopping centres, you’ll now struggle to find somewhere to drop your litter. Why? because of the ‘threat’ of a bomb being hidden in the bins. It’s true. So, not only do we live in fear of an Islamic backlash on the ‘civilised’ western world, we have to drown in a tidal wave of crap created as a direct result of that fear, because as a society, we’re too scared to install bins on street corners anymore.
Also, there must be armies of men employed by local councils to try and keep the streets clean, yet here in France there’s usually just one or two employed by each commune, and they do litter collection on a very part-time basis. There just isn’t the same amount of it strewn about. Sure, there’s some – especially in the bigger towns, but nothing like the amount I’ve seen in the UK. And, in my opinion, the problem’s becoming worse each time I visit.
It has to start with the parents and the schools. It has to be a mindset instilled in the very young. But before that, we have to change the mindset of the generation that is currently creating the problem. How do we do that? I don’t have a clue – I’m just thankful that my parents taught me the values I grew up with, and passed on to my own kids. They, in turn I’m sure, will pass those values on to their own kids. It’s a start.
Notice in the New Forest.
Until the next time, au revoir.
Beautifully written Stu. Heartfelt, moving and so true! Thank you for reminding us all of our responsibilities to our world and to our children’s children. X
One of the things that really shocked me when we moved to the UK (15 years ago) was the fact that people openly threw litter on the ground. I grew up in the time of a great anti-litter campaign in Australia which changed several generations attitude to litter forever on a national level. I would have a hard time making myself drop litter it is such an unthinkable thing to do in my mind. I think that the IRA bombing campaigns which lead to the removal of bins in the UK had the consequence that you noted, and there has been no concerted high level effort to change attitudes. If you can convince the current population of 8 – 12 year olds that littering is wrong, you’ve solved the problem, as they will influence their parents and teach their kids in the years to come. In France it seems to me that the rubbish collection companies have engaged more with the population and everyone expects to recycle. I suspect this engagement with what is happening to your rubbish has a knock on effect with regard to attitudes to littering.
BTW, McDonald’s usually don’t get permission to open an outlet unless they agree to do the sort of litter patrols your son was involved in. It is the local council setting the standard, not McDonalds.
And don’t even go near the subject of spitting and chewing-gum. Do people really want to wallow in their own crap? I don’t understand at all.
I’ve started to notice the odd plastic bottle in the ditches along the sides of the road here in France, too, and empty fag packets are almost commonplace – but not yet on anything like the same scale as Stu describes in the UK.
I hope it isn’t just a matter of time, but I fear the worst.
Phil
Well said Stu!
We live in the New Forest and we are always going out of our gate and picking up litter in the road and ditch outside the house. A large Pizza box the other day!! It was the same in school, rubbish was constantly dropped within sight of bins too!! I think today many people feel so disenfranchised (if that’s the right word?) and hopeless that they no longer have any feeling of really belonging to a community any more so it doesn’t matter to them if they spoil it.
Nice blog post Stu. I find this subject almost too depressing for words. At the heart of it is the assumption that it’s someone else’s problem. If I drop this packet someone else, who’s job it is to pick it up will do so. This perpetrated mainly, I suspect, by people who rely on other people, i.e. the state, to do and pay for everything in their lives. The other side of it is the rejection of deference to any kind of authority (not always a bad thing). A petty, meaningless, daily rebellion by people who reject the right of others to tell them what to do, even if it’s “don’t litter”. As if by littering they are taking back a bit of power in their lives over which they are mostly powerless.
One of my biggest gripes is when the UK is defined as Angleterre.
Angleterre only applies to England.
I don’t know how many times over the years in France and old French dependencies that at reception when booking in with a UK passport that I’ve had to inform that Angleterre only applies to England and not the other countries of the UK.
Well in this case, David – I meant England. That’s where I was, and that’s where I’m from. I don’t define the UK as ‘Angleterre’. I know only too well the partisan nature of the Scots, Welsh & Irish!
Yes interestingly my friend who moved to Cornwall notices this when she comes back to the GLasgow area. I must look for some litter then next time we are in France. I’m not sure what the biggest difference I notice is between the two places France and Scotland but up until now it would have been the sun ! But I’m not sure nowadays what is happening to the weather.