A spin off from the cycling thread. I cycle around Hertfordshire / south Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire a fair bit - about 2,500 miles since April, mostly on country lanes and B roads. This summer I have also cycled in Worcestershire, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. What I noticed in these latter counties was the near complete absence of any roadside litter or fly tipping. Whereas in Herts and south Beds (less so in Bucks) it is everywhere.
To put some scale to it; there is a country lane not far from where I live that I walk down regularly, and in a 1km stretch I can easily pick up a carrier bag full of cans, bottles, food wrappers etc every couple of weeks. And that’s before the fly tipping - someone seems to dump a couple of bags of kitchen rubbish down there every couple of weeks, and then there’s often small quantities of builders waste etc. And this is just on a 1km stretch near me with not that much traffic (perhaps 50 vehicles an hour). However it’s the same down almost every lane around here. The local council are actually pretty good about collecting fly tipping, and have put up suitable signs etc., but in reality there is little that they can do about the litter.
Even on the road I live on, I will pick up a couple of freshly deposited drinks cans / bottles, fast food wrappers etc., every single day. This is on a stretch of road perhaps 100 metres long. Probably a quarter of the drinks containers are Red Bull, and a third are alcoholic in some way - this is odd as the road doesn’t see many pedestrians, so presumably they are being thrown from cars / vans*.
I am curious to know if this is something that is peculiar to this part of the world, or if the problem on the scale I have described is common elsewhere. As I said, other areas of the country I have visited this year don’t seem to have the same issue.
*Let us leave aside the point that people who through rubbish from their cars are complete idiots who deserve to rot in a large pile of their own ordure; and I have vindictive yet cunning plans to deal with anyone I observe to be guilty of such an offence.
To put some scale to it; there is a country lane not far from where I live that I walk down regularly, and in a 1km stretch I can easily pick up a carrier bag full of cans, bottles, food wrappers etc every couple of weeks. And that’s before the fly tipping - someone seems to dump a couple of bags of kitchen rubbish down there every couple of weeks, and then there’s often small quantities of builders waste etc. And this is just on a 1km stretch near me with not that much traffic (perhaps 50 vehicles an hour). However it’s the same down almost every lane around here. The local council are actually pretty good about collecting fly tipping, and have put up suitable signs etc., but in reality there is little that they can do about the litter.
Even on the road I live on, I will pick up a couple of freshly deposited drinks cans / bottles, fast food wrappers etc., every single day. This is on a stretch of road perhaps 100 metres long. Probably a quarter of the drinks containers are Red Bull, and a third are alcoholic in some way - this is odd as the road doesn’t see many pedestrians, so presumably they are being thrown from cars / vans*.
I am curious to know if this is something that is peculiar to this part of the world, or if the problem on the scale I have described is common elsewhere. As I said, other areas of the country I have visited this year don’t seem to have the same issue.
*Let us leave aside the point that people who through rubbish from their cars are complete idiots who deserve to rot in a large pile of their own ordure; and I have vindictive yet cunning plans to deal with anyone I observe to be guilty of such an offence.
