MORE and better cleaning up is urged as the solution to tackle litter in Scotland in an Agenda article by George Niblock and John Crawford ("We cannot keep sweeping grubby problem of litter under the carpet", The Herald, January 7).
The authors state that "we need to clean up our country" and refers to prevention being the "holy grail" of the Scottish Government's new Litter Strategy, driven by Zero Waste Scotland.
While few would disagree about the importance of cleaner communities, simply picking up litter is not the only or best way we are going to get them. Councils, businesses, charities and volunteers up and down the country are already engaged in constant clean-ups.
Simply picking up after people is a never-ending task and we need to concentrate on stopping the litter being dropped in the first place. That's why the Scottish Government's litter strategy takes a three-pronged approach: information (telling people why dropping litter is wrong); infrastructure (more Recycle on the Go, more bins) and enforcement - already this year the fines for littering and fly-tipping have been substantially increased to provide a stronger deterrent. Scotland now has some of the toughest anti-littering penalties in Europe, with fines of £80 for littering and £200 for fly-tipping.
This renewed focus on litter is sorely needed and I hope as many organisations, communities and individuals as possible are able to support the delivery of the strategy.
Iain Gulland,
Chief Executive,
Zero Waste Scotland, Forthside Way, Stirling.
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