By John F Crawford, Waste management expert
NEWS that the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority are to appoint a “litter manager” at a salary of between £36,000 and £40,000 was accompanied by the usual PR jargon that “the post-holder will be involved in joined-up strategies with other agencies”, has had a mixed reception from the public. One Herald correspondent welcomed the announcement, also advocating the introduction of a 50p refundable deposit on all packages and containers. Another correspondent however suggested that the money would be better spent on funding local volunteers to carry out “clean-ups”.
It’s obvious we have an appalling attitude to litter in this country, despite Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB) spending tens of thousands of pounds in the last four decades on education programmes. Citizens who’d never dream of dropping litter when visiting continental cities are apparently unable to behave similarly when back home here. It’s not helped by a regime that requires our councils to meet the street cleansing standards specified in the Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse, yet they are monitored by KSB using an entirely different yardstick (that says the councils are currently achieving more than 90 per cent “cleanliness”).
It’s thought that many of the people who drop litter do so because there’s little chance of being caught: if more people were prosecuted regularly, many others would probably stop doing it. On the few occasions that fixed penalty notices are issued, the excuses are often banal: “it was blown out my/my toddler’s hand” or “there aren’t enough litter bins round here” etc. A number of new approaches have been tried in recent years, the most prominent being the 5p charge on plastic carriers that has increased the income of many small traders but had no impact whatsoever on litter, and the current resurrection of deposit return schemes (that all serious research indicates will need more than 80 per cent participation to be feasible). In the case of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, a deposit return scheme will have little or no effect on the discarded tents and assorted rubbish left behind after impromptu weekend parties on the bonnie banks.
Little if any publicity or support however has been given to East Ayrshire Council’s direct approach over a decade ago when their enforcement staff supported by Community Police Officers in plain clothes targeted secondary pupils (one of the largest cohorts of offenders when it comes to littering) at lunch breaks. Despite all schools in the council area having been pre-warned that patrols would be out, a number of fixed penalty notices were issued in one week at several schools. Several parents were outraged at the strategy but the consequence was that afterwards, instead of having to spend 30-45 minutes at the school gates after every lunch-time break, the cleansing crews had these tidied up in under 10 minutes. The positive publicity that followed was phenomenal.
So perhaps we need to concentrate more on enforcement now rather than brainstorming new “strategies” that might not work anyway? And maybe if the National Park Authority were to take on a couple of enforcement staff rather than a “manager” it might see a better return for its money. That however doesn’t mean that there isn’t a role for community volunteers, but these should be complementing the work of the authorities rather than replacing it. Nor should we ignore the work of KSB, but it would help if we heard more about the success of their educational projects.
*The author spent nearly five decades in the Scottish waste management industry.
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