Rubbish Roundup 25th May

Rubbish Roundup 25th May

Rubbish Roundup 25th May

We start this week’s roundup in Bradford, where KFC has had to plead with customers not to dump rubbish from its recently re-opened drive-thru restaurants. There is currently only one drive-thru open in the Bradford area and the surge in takeaway rubbish being dumped has prompted the restaurant to take to Twitter to urge people not to drop litter.

The tweet said ‘Something that doesn’t make us smile is people spoiling our communities and wrecking the environment. Yup, litter. Being a good neighbour matters – so we just want to encourage you to take your litter home with you, or toss it in the bin.’

 

Next, we head to Northern Ireland where a report has found that cigarette butts are the most commonly littered item. A survey of 1100 public areas found that plastic bottles, cans, and takeaway coffee cups were also an issue in 45% of the locations surveyed.

Litter in rural areas is a concern and a quarter of rural roads failed to reach an acceptable standard for litter, which comes mostly from drivers throwing takeaway cups and other rubbish out of their car windows.

But according to Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful who carried out the survey, there were improvements in the level of dog fouling that was recorded as well as overall cleanliness. In the latest survey, there was only dog fouling present on 6% of the streets and other public places surveyed, compared with 10% in the previous year. 86% of the places surveyed met the standard for cleanliness.

Cigarette butts are the fly in the ointment though. 60% of the surveyed areas had at least one discarded cigarette butt counted in the litter.

The report urges people to ensure they are disposing of their rubbish in a responsible way, particularly as there are pressures on waste services due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Cigarette Butt

On to Nottingham, where Forestry England has hit out at the ‘unacceptable behaviour’ of litterbugs who dumped large amounts of rubbish in the popular Sherwood Pines Forest Park. It has pleaded with visitors countless times to avoid travelling to the forest and dumping litter because teams who look after it have been depleted by the coronavirus outbreak.

Despite the pleas though, a minority of visitors have been dumping bottles, bags, and food wrappers at the beauty spot.

Forestry England said it is appealing to people to respect and protect the forest by taking their litter home during these challenging times.

As the lockdown restrictions have eased slightly, Forestry England said it had been preparing for more visitors by stepping up cleaning and adding social distancing information and guidance.

 

 Finally, we head to Bristol, where volunteers who have been cleaning up their village during lockdown have pleaded with drivers and visitors to avoid dropping litter there as lockdown restrictions ease.

Residents in Portbury have spent their time in lockdown clearing roadside verges of litter. Over the course of just a few days, volunteers collected 17 black bin liners of rubbish along with other items like discarded car parts. The roads that pass through the village are usually busy commuter routes but they took the opportunity to clear the verges while there’s been less traffic.

The Parish Council chairman said he was shocked to see the amount of litter in the verges and hedgerows. Amongst the litter, there were polystyrene, cups, supermarket trays, crisp packets, fast food wrappers, and plastic bottles. He said that the village wanted to send the message to people that they should respect the countryside and take their rubbish home with them rather than throwing it out of their car windows.