There are a lot of things that annoy me about litter. It’s disgusting. It’s dangerous for wildlife. It’s the waste of a finite resource (i.e.
much of what we find can be recycled).
It’s expensive to clean up … and the money spent on cleaning could go
towards so many other things. It’s
illogical. I could go on and on (and I
often do). But my latest bugbear is how
easy it would be to stop litter in some circumstances, namely when it is
directly caused by stores.
Many shops have wire carts outside to hold their cardboard
boxes. While I hope the majority of this
cardboard ends up being recycled, some can usually be found scattered around
the store in an apparent escape attempt.
This was certainly the case during our recent Clean for the Queen litter
pick, where a large amount of cardboard was found a stone’s throw from
Wilkinson’s. One of our volunteers often
finds it near the New Road Tesco, and I have chased stray pieces from there
myself during high winds.
There are a few options for stopping this: a
mesh net of some type seems like it would do the trick. Or how about employees periodically check the
premises? Shops are supposed to keep
within 100 metres clean. These seem like
simple—and cheap—solutions to a problem that compounds an already difficult
issue.
