This hand-coloured litter box outside my local corner shop broke my heart. The label reads, “Please don’t litter. There are 2 bins. If they are full, put your rubbish in this box (thank you). Be proud. You’re saving life.”
Plastic tidal wave
UK households throw away an estimated 1.7 billion pieces of plastic each week. Since 2017, I have picked up and recycled 5,457 cans or plastic bottles on my walks around my home in Reading. Most of these are on the short walk from the corner shop to the local school.
This tidal wave of rubbish spoils country walks and makes me feel depressed about my neighbourhood. But it reminds me of a poster I saw as child. “One piece of litter won’t make a difference” repeated across a beach many, many times.
We can make a difference. Let’s not bottle it.
Sweet rewards for cleaning up
I took part in a beach clean in the 1970s. It made me think. But my main motivation for picking up litter was mercenary. When I was growing up, most soft drinks were in glass bottles and had a deposit if returned. My friends Barney, Gus and I spent our summer holidays hunting the fields and hedgerows looking for bottles. Corona bottles were the most prized. When we had collected enough, we would trade them in for sweets: Fruit Salads were 4 for a penny, sherbet lemons and sometimes liquorice.
Our rubbish rambles led us to some strange places. I remember being chased out of a basement of a shop in North Walsham. Perhaps we were trying to create a circular economy?
I’m a secret lemonade bottle picker
I feel a bit furtive and ashamed picking up cans and bottles. Why? I’m being a good citizen. The people dropping cans are not. I saw a schoolgirl drop a can in front of me. I didn’t challenge her (I wish I had). I just raised my eyebrows slightly, picked it up and took it home.
Lots of the bottles dropped are energy drinks like Monster and Red Bull. Why don’t these people have the energy to recycle?
How to increase plastic recycling in the UK
The UK recycling rate for plastic is just 17%. How do we get people to care?
One way is educate people at a young age through initiatives like:
Big Plastic Count schools scheme
Eco Schools (Keep Britain Tidy)
We need to get them at the ‘create a litter box and colour it in’ stage rather than when ‘it looks cool for me to chuck my vape in this bush’.
Cash incentives for recycling
By raising cash for charity or themselves through deposit schemes, people will be switched on to recycling. Look what happened when people had to pay for a 5p shopping bag. The number of bags used went down by more than 95% in England. £180 million raised for good causes from the revenue collected.
If people say the schemes are too costly or difficult, we should hand the problem back to the polluters. If Coke, Pepsi and Red Bull can spend millions on advertising and sponsoring sports events, they can afford to clear up their own mess. And if it puts prices up for their ‘sugary death water’, then it might reduce childhood obesity, too!
What you can to reduce plastic
Every day, answer a trivia question and remove one piece of plastic from the ocean and coastlines.
Ditch plastic bottles with Bower Collective.
Alex White writes 
Leave a comment