Dirty Scruffy Nation?

[Danllan]

I've said for ages there is only one solution to this problem, and its a massive packaging tax that is then returned to whoever recycles the item. Make every piece of rubbish worth something, then people will make sure its disposed of, because if they don't they are throwing money out of the window...

Agree 100%with that, but... I'd increase the penalties for littering / fly tipping too, as mentioned in another thread a while back, make it automatic for a any vehicle rubbish is ejected or tipped from to be confiscated and sold, the money going to public funds.

Thinking on that... could be a good thing for motor insurance to be invalidated too, if vehicle used as above.

 

[Mr Mackay]

I ask the question , Is Greece any better than it was 35 years ago (I have not been back for a while )
I recall they had the habit of putting their old crap in plastic carriers and tying them up ,a bit like dog owners and crap bags , and leaving at the side of the road !!
Always at odds with how beautiful the place was , I thought !!

 

[Roger Perry]

please , please , any forum members reading this from usa, newzealand, canada or any others make a comment on how it is in your country?

Living in beautiful Colorado we take pride in our surroundings.
Any litter that appears is quickly collected. On the main highway thru the valley this is carried out by CDOT (Colorado dept of transportation) and groups of volunteers...................think I can say that during my 27 years of living here I have never seen trash thrown from a vehicle.

 

[S00TY]

Me and the wife have been to Norway, Iceland and the Canaries a few times over the last few years and it makes you realise what a disgusting dirty place we live in. I get very embarrassed and sad thinking what foreign tourists must think when they travel round the UK.

 

[kiwi pom]

The problem with making rubbish valuable to charities or whoever picks it up is it could encourage more rubbish to be chucked out the window, “just doing my bit for charity “

Good point. Like all those that leave all their sh*t at festivals because someone told them the tents are collected and given to the less fortunate.

I was liking Goweresque's idea until you posted.

Everything's complicated.

 

[BobTheSmallholder]

Unfortunately until laws are both passed and ENFORCED nothing will change. As others have pointed out there is serious and realistic scope for proper deposit schemes to be introduced if done properly.

One thing that has always stuck with me is how when I was studying Design Tech at school there was a huge amount of time and effort spent on recyclability. We were told constantly that all materials used had to have a reuse/recycling plan in place or they could never become a real product. Turns out its all crap and companies use whatever is cheapest and couldn't care less about recycling.

I'd love to see a 10-15yr phase-in period of laws whereby every product sold in the country had to either be re-usable or recyclable or both. So for example cups would have to be made from steel, aluminium, wood or cardboard that is NOT treated with plastic/wax etc. A product like sileage wrap wouldn't be able to be sold unless it had a downstream product life (turned into fenceposts?) or could be sent to be re-processed into new products or fed into a plastic-to-oil plant. Car/phone/electronics manufacturers would have to have a proven re-processing path for every component before they could release a product to market etc. I'd love to see manufacturers held accountable for product that couldn't be recycled due to bad design.

Ah to dream!

 

[bluebell]

the germans, dont mention the germans? but wasnt it mercedes or vw or bmw or maybe all three that years ago designed their cars with the idea at the end of the vehicles life it all could be recycled anyone know more?

 

[Partstech]

Me and the wife have been to Norway, Iceland and the Canaries a few times over the last few years and it makes you realise what a disgusting dirty place we live in. I get very embarrassed and sad thinking what foreign tourists must think when they travel round the UK.

Totally agree, the wife and I visited Finland in the summer, and absolutely everywhere was spotless.We travelled many miles on the main roads, and there was no detritus anywhere. In several towns and cities ,can and bottles were left neatly on the top of rubbish bins, and collected by people on bikes with large carriers on the front and back. We wondered what was going on, so politely asked one of the cyclist(absolutely everyone in Finland was so friendly, so had no worries) chap told us that on returning the empties to the supermarket he received monetary vouchers to off set his spending on food, he said that if he did a couple of hours three times a week in the evenings around Turku (a smallish city in the south) collecting, it paid for his weekly shop. Everyone appears to buy into the tidy ethos, as even the young adults who were sitting in groups enjoying the evening sunshine, got up and took their empty bottles and cans to one such collector. Could you imagine that happening in a city in this country?

 

[Lofty1984]

the only place I’ve seen worse than Britain was Paris litter was unbelievable on the drive in