A total of £10 billion a year is spent picking up litter across Europe, with the bill in Scotland amounting to £73 million, an environmental charity has said.
A total of £10 billion a year is spent picking up litter across Europe, with the bill in Scotland amounting to £73 million, an environmental charity has said.
Derek Robertson, chief executive of Keep Scotland Beautiful and president of the Clean Europe Network, disclosed the "shocking" cost of clean-up work at a special summit in Brussels, Belgium.
He said: "This £10 billion cost equates to over £20 for every man, woman and child across the EU - a shocking statistic and one which should startle policy-makers into long overdue action."
The Stop Litter Now! summit is bringing together the public and private sector in a bid to look at the cause of Europe's litter problem and what can be done to tackle it.
The event will hear how the Clean Up Scotland campaign, involving the Scottish Government, local councils, the voluntary sector, private firms and others, has led to more than 500,000 people volunteering for clean-up initiatives since it was launched two years ago.
The campaign aims to make dropping litter as socially unacceptable as drink-driving and for Scotland to be the cleanest nation in the European Union.
Mr Robertson said it was "vital that we prioritise the creation of clean communities in the first place" and added: "We want to build and strengthen a culture of cleanliness across Europe.
"In Scotland, we want our country to be the cleanest country in Europe by 2020 and build a litter-free Europe by 2030.
"With 500,000 people in Scotland having already played their part in changing their local environment, our domestic Clean Up Scotland campaign is genuinely showing the way ahead to the rest of Europe."
The Scottish Government's Zero Waste Scotland programme is driving the country's first-ever strategy to tackle littering.
Chief executive Iain Gulland said the £10bn Europe-wide clean-up cost "shows litter is a huge problem across the whole of Europe, not just Scotland".
He added: "Our research has identified that litter costs Scotland at least £78m a year, including the direct costs of litter clearance, communications and enforcement, as well as wider costs associated with impacts on health and wellbeing, crime, wildlife and our environment.
"There's a lot we can do in Scotland to tackle the problem, driven by the Scottish Government's litter strategy.
"As well as clean-up activities, Zero Waste Scotland is funding innovative solutions to preventing litter, designing out unnecessary packaging, incentive schemes for communities and imaginative communications to get people to think again about dropping litter, which blights many communities across the country."
The charity has recently launched a community grant scheme to support to thousands of community groups across Scotland.
It will award grants of £250 to local campaigners, allowing them to make small improvements to their local environment.
The scheme is being funded from the proceeds of the carrier bag charge collected by Tesco, which came into force on October 20.
The grants will seek to support a wide range of local environment improvement projects including litter prevention and removal, outdoor regeneration projects and fresh planting.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article