Lockdown rubbish

[Bill]

Lockdown has forced most of the litter pickers off the streets leaving some areas looking a right mess, especially around the entry points to our motorways and the lack of vegetation at this time of year shows just how bad it can get.

The thing is, I believe most people wouldn’t dream of tossing stuff out of a car window and that it’s only a small minority causing this problem. There has been talk of setting up intelligent cameras to detect it but I suspect most junk gets thrown at night so the equipment would be expensive and more importantly, probably useless. The law has recently been changed to allow fines to be applied to the vehicle owner irrespective of who threw the litter however the figures suggest that the majority of people don’t end up paying.

So how do we solve this dirty problem when all prior theories and plans to date have failed?

 

Bill 😊

[asperity]

Even when there are litter bins available the louts prefer to drop their rubbish on the ground nearby. It makes me wonder what the state of these peoples' houses must be.

[Davy51]

Another covid dividend is the increase in dog ownership & errant owners allowing dogs to foul pavements willy nilly. 

[Bill]

I think it’s interesting to see that everyone seems to have accepted wearing a mask in places like shops these days and you don’t hear anybody complaining about it. When it all started, the anti-maskers made a huge fuss about human rights and civil liberties but you never hear anything these days or see anyone who appears to be deliberately going out of their way to flout the rules.  

It makes me wonder if we could solve some of our other problems by applying similar rules that might upset some folk in the short term but after a while become an acceptable way of life. I’m thinking here about the littering laws that are so soft and ineffective that they’re ignored. In most US states it’s $1000 if your seen dropping litter with absolutely no excuses but ask any American if they feel this infringes their rights in any way and the answer is no. It’s just something they’ve got used to and don’t do and we could learn from this.

 

Bill 😊

[asperity]

I live in a cul de sac with about 40 houses in. As far as I know all my neighbours are fine people (on both sides to quote Donald), but quite often I find litter (beer and soft drink bottles and cans, take away wrappings, face masks etc) discarded on the road, in bushes and on the verges. Do I have vagrants as neighbours, or do people from outside deliberately come off the main road and down the cul de sac to dispose of their rubbish? The really cute ones who leave their empty bottles or cans standing up neatlt on the side of the path or on top of a wall, as if to make it easier for "someone else" to dispose of them.

[Bill]

I’m also in quite a long cul-de-sac and most of the time it’s litter free. It’s all bungalows with mainly older people and I think people here would pick up the odd bit of litter and bin it.

A few years ago though I turned into the drive behind another car and couldn’t believe my eyes when a whole load of Mc Donald’s rubbish was tossed from the window. Given it’s a cu-de-sac I thought he’s going to get a piece of my mind for that, so I followed him down the road. Unbelievably he decided to try and turn around in my drive of all places, so I followed him in and he was going nowhere. The lad, probably late teens early twenties leapt from the car and angrily asked what my problem was. 😊 He knew his rights and was now threatening to report me to the police for false imprisonment. Nah. That doesn’t work with me.

Anyway, once he realized his big mistake and he and his mates had walked back and picked it all up and binned it I let him out. What an absolute plonker though. I always use my mirror to check there’s nothing behind before tossing stuff out.

 

Bill 😊