What can we do to go about the beautification of the UK? There is lots of trash thrown aside, how to fix this?

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Ok_Pangolin1908@reddit

I’ve just bought a decent litter picker and bag holder from Amazon for £40, you can get for less. I’m going out and just doing it myself

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_diseas3_@reddit

Get a superhero costume to wear while you do it.

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Ok_Pangolin1908@reddit

Great idea, do you think a cape or just spandex or both?

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_diseas3_@reddit

I'd say a cape is mandatory. For the rest of the outfit you could just do whatever feels right.

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Chargerado@reddit

Legislate against food manufacturers making excessive and non biodegradable packaging. Stop blaming consumers in their entirety for all the mess all the time.

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_diseas3_@reddit

Just because the consumers are the ones littering, definitely stop blaming them. Makes sense.

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Additional_Jaguar170@reddit

Shall we start by not using americanisms like 'Trash' Rubbish is the correct term.

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Take a bag with you when you go for a walk and pick rubbish up. When walking in a local forest we would fill a Tesco bag. Litter is at least a problem you can do something about, there are some problems that you cannot tackle but rubbish you definitely can. Picking up rubbish is quite rewarding, you might find people join you. A few people picking up bags of rubbish having fun.

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Emergency-Ad-5379@reddit

I do this but I feel like I get weird looks where I live. Sorry for not wanting to live in a shithole I guess.

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Effective_Soup7783@reddit

The trick is to get and wear a hi vis jacket. Nobody gives you a second glance then.

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Emergency-Ad-5379@reddit

Hmm, I do have one for cycling, my concern is that someone will tell me I missed a spot or complain about the state of the bins

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_diseas3_@reddit

Wear a superhero costume and do it in an exaggerated way. Imagine a few friends do it, would be so much fun. Just run around doing good.

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baddymcbadface@reddit

Just ignore them. I felt weird at first but now I feel weird not picking rubbish up. The more people that don't the more it's normalised. If someone thinks you're weird it says something about them and nothing about you. If they said something to me I'd be so confused by their weirdness I wouldn't know what to say but my face would say a lot.

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_magnetic_north_@reddit

I do this when I walk my dog

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CheesyChips@reddit

I would love to do this with my dog but she hates the bag rustling

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Effective_Soup7783@reddit

There are lots of neighbourhood groups that do organised clean ups weekly. Check your local Facebook groups, as that’s where they normally hang out. If there isn’t one, start one - it seems pretty easy to get people to join them.

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SmashedWorm64@reddit

Litter bugs to lose their drivers licenses. Obviously they are too thick to realise they can keep rubbish in their car until they get home - might as well stop future accidents by not letting idiots on the road.

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Meanwhile-in-Paris@reddit

A majoration of their council tax or a percentage remove from benefits.

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nolinearbanana@reddit

More severe penalties for littering and prison sentences for actual fly-tipping (not where a crisp packet has slipped out your bin). Instead of fines, litterers should be required to collect litter - so many kg's depending on the offence.

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Meanwhile-in-Paris@reddit

That’s means payed officers to enforce the policy. That not really in the budgets for now.

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Ahoramaster@reddit

I'm all for this. But make it time dependent rather than weight dependent. People value their time more but would find ways to game weight.

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nolinearbanana@reddit

No - if it's time, people will wander around doing fuck all until their time is up. You have supervised work. Anyone trying to "game" the system has their requirements doubled.

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TubbyTyrant1953@reddit

Drop a chocolate wrapper on the floor - death. Put a can of coke in the wrong recycling bin - hanged, drawn and quartered

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Ranoni18@reddit

Heavy fines for littering and fly-tipping. Education in schools. Mandatory litter picking for schools, youth groups and low-level prisoners.

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Meanwhile-in-Paris@reddit

Make it like a festival. pick up litter all morning and celebrate in the afternoon! My mum and her friend do that every year. They spend the day at the beach pickup up litter and have. Big party in the evening. It started with a small group of 12 now they are in the hundreds.

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snakeoildriller@reddit

Yup! And heavy, **on-the-spot** fines (mobile card readers are a thing) with increased fines if you can't pay within 7 days.

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MonkeyTree567@reddit

They actually do go litter picking in our local schools.

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Scotto6UK@reddit

>Mandatory litter picking for schools, youth groups and low-level prisoners. I read that as low-level pensioners. Just the younger ones. I wouldn't be against this idea.

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Belle_TainSummer@reddit

Flytipping drastically increased in my area after the council closed a lot of local recycling centres, required we make an appointment time to visit the ones still open, and started charging small businesses for using it. Seems like, in the name of efficiency, they made it easier to flytip and harder and more expensive to play by the rules. Maybe make the recycling and waste disposal centres less restrictive, and more people will freely use them?

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-qqqwwweeerrrtttyyy-@reddit

>Mandatory litter picking for schools, youth groups and low-level prisoners. Why not make it something less punitive? One person devised a national Clean Up Day in Australia. It doesnt solve everything but it's viewed far more positively. There are regular voluntary clean ups in beachside towns in Cornwall too. Have incentives to recycle such as deposit schemes. Instill a sense of personal responsibility for cleanliness if the environment such as Japanese school children cleaning after themselves, or being fined in Singapore if you leave dirty trays and rubbish on tables in food courts, etc.

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seriousrikk@reddit

Mandatory = bad. Forcing folks to do a thing they don’t want to do builds exactly the sort of negative association we want to break. Make it voluntary but reward it in some way.

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-qqqwwweeerrrtttyyy-@reddit

Am well aware of the meaning of 'mandatory' but thank you anyway, as I can see that I wasn't as clear with my post as I could have been so have made edits.

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seriousrikk@reddit

Sorry, I fucked up, I thought I was replying to the same post you were and not yours directly.

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-qqqwwweeerrrtttyyy-@reddit

Np. As I said, it helped me to clarify :-)

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zone6isgreener@reddit

It's cultural and a hard slog. Southall has that mindset of dumping rubbish that a few miles up the road you just don't find to the same degree, and people copy people so it perpetuates. In my patch I walk through a small council estate. There's rubbish strewn over front gardens that is never removed along with mattresses or old furniture regularly dumped on the pavement, but a few streets away it is spotless. In fact dog walkers and others go around picking up litter. A little sub-culture dominates inside that estates that the surrounding area just doesn't have, it's really interesting to observe. Texas did a great job with the "don't mess with Texas" campaign that people who don't give a shit, but were into the whole state pride thing to behave. We need something like that here. Also I want the Japanese system in school. Children spend the end of the day cleaning up themselves. Make tidying up yourself rather than something you pay others to solve a culture.

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UmlautsAndRedPandas@reddit

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the Japanese system is more about maintaining old things for as long as possible so that they don't have to spend public money to refurbish the classrooms, coupled with the pressure of collectivism, than it is about teaching personal responsibility. They keep it up at university by expecting the students to clean the communal areas in student dormitories: I can only describe the student dormitory I lived in on my year abroad as "squalor". Also the streets may be spotless over there, but fly-tipping in the countryside is still an issue. The difference is the risk of being seen littering versus not.

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zone6isgreener@reddit

Tidying up isn't, that's ridiculous.

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UmlautsAndRedPandas@reddit

More bins placed everywhere. Better funding to councils to employ more street cleaners and landscapers who do more regular shifts. I'll never forget going to China and seeing the armies of migrant workers employed as street cleaners and landscapers by city councils. That's what makes the difference.

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TubbyTyrant1953@reddit

Litter picking, especially with your local community. Get your MP involved, politicians love that shit. Actually report fly tipping to your local council. A lot of people just ignore it, and if they don't know about it they can plausibly ignore it. If you see neighbours who are struggling with rubbish, try talking to them. Perhaps there's an issue you can help with. An elderly neighbour who forgets to take the bins out or a single mother who struggles to find time to look after her front yard could be a small volunteering opportunity.

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AlanBennet29@reddit

Everyone needs to hassle their local councils to do a better fucking job. It’s a disgrace what they get away with.

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Joshthenosh77@reddit

Like the episode of Star Trek , every single crime is punishable by death , after the first few million are executed no more crime or trash

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JoelRosquete@reddit

I’m in favour of the soft approach and I do carry a bag with me everywhere I go for a walk and pic up what I can but some enforcement is needed as well. I live in Bournemouth and is not exactly a cheap place but it is so full of rubbish everywhere. Big part of the issue is the council they do not clean roads regularly as they used to 10 years back as I remember the sweep truck going around my area every Wednesday but now I haven’t seen it for years. Then in theory we do have laws for littering but don’t know a single person that has been fined so again lack of enforcement. The beach specially around the piers is terrible people not cleaning after themselves is an education thing but again the gov not helping as I walk my dog there everyday and depending on the stretch of the beach you can go for over a mile without a single bin on sight. I would also make a case for fines if not maintaining gardens and front of the houses as well. Not moving your bins out of the way after collection day should also be fined. Overloading your bins as well as the seagulls will make a mess if they can reach the content. Anyway not an easy solution here, but I like to see there’s plenty of us concerned with the situation.

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pysgod-wibbly_wobbly@reddit

Broken window syndrome. The government has allowed our roads and pavements to crumble , buildings are decaying, rundown closed up high streets. There is nothing to take pride in, if s place is already looking like a shithole people will drop litter because its already shit . If you go to towns that have been maintained, flower beds, modern investment there is also no litter. The fish rots from the head down.

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Aggressive_Sound@reddit

https://lagercan.co.uk/, Thames 21, and the Canal and River Trust, all active in that area!

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Oli99uk@reddit

Singapore style fines and enforcement. Maybe New York (parking) style reporting where the public can report people with phone evidence (app) and get a cut of the penalty fine - the bulk to the council and a bit to national government.

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rsweb@reddit

What could possibly have changed over the last decade in the UK to see more people littering?

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fiddly_foodle_bird@reddit

It's from recycling boxes, not actual littering.

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BigBunneh@reddit

Not by us. We're on a country lane just outside a small city, and along with the fly tipping, we get lots of low level littering thrown from cars, or dropped from cars parked up. The recent spate is someone who regularly likes a bottle of Jam Shed throwing them from the car. I counted about forty along a stretch I hadn't walked for a few weeks. To add to that, some kids decided it would be a great idea to line the bottles up so cars would drive over them, and now we have broken glass along the lane where people walk and cycle with their kids, dogs and ride horses. We regularly go and pick up from our stretch, but it's an endless task.

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Ahoramaster@reddit

Not in my experience it's not.

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ImpressNice299@reddit

Immigration from countries where littering is normal will be part of it, but much bigger parts are changes to rubbish collections and cuts to council funding.

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fsuk@reddit

Fewer public anti-litter campaigns, smaller budgets for councils to clean up, parents used to litter free environment not realising they need to teach kids not to litter, more fast food

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KilmarnockDave@reddit

Young people feeling not caring about their community is the number 1 culprit in my eyes.

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Thestolenone@reddit

I live in a village and there are litter picking parties one or two times a week. The council will give you free litter picking kits with bags, gloves and grabbers. There is no money here for council run cleaning so people just do it themselves. Its a never ending job but the village looks better for it.

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alltorque1982@reddit

Wasn't there a spate of tiktoks or something where people were encouraged to challenge the officials who were stopping people littering? Can't remember the details and it's hard to explain, but it went something like: Bob littered, uniformed people stopped and asked for details or gave a ticket, the tiktoker then appeared and stopped them, protecting Bob, uniformed guy gives up and walks off. A bit like the police 'auditors ' with the drones. None of these things help people have respect for our country in any shape or form.

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MonkeyTree567@reddit

I do beach clean ups regularly with a group. It’s not the point though, there’s no general values any more, just pig ignorance. I brought my sone up to know better.

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Belle_TainSummer@reddit

More rubbish bins in the street, more frequent emptying of rubbish bins, making sure that there are far more public toilets on road routes, shrinking the gap between rich and poor so that more people that they have a civic stake in their country and are willing to feel like they have a responsibility towards keeping it beautiful, rerun the Keep Britain Tidy Campaign, and more public enforcement of litter laws across all age groups and demographics. I have seen more older people contemptuously throw trash away in car parks than I have teens and twentysomethings. Did that Range Rover really get shipped without an ashtray? I think not.

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thewoefulchasm@reddit

A lot more bins would help, there's hardly any in most places these days

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msully89@reddit

Trash 💀

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Reesno33@reddit

"Hey Billy Bob theirs trash on the sidewalk, let's put it in the waste paper basket"

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skintension@reddit

I live in a pretty nice neighborhood (Belsize Park) and have had local residents tell me that a) littering isn't a big deal because the council picks it all up eventually anyway, and we pay council tax and b) dumping a gallon of paint into the gutter is fine because it's non-toxic(ish) and the gutters don't flow to river anymore anyway. I guess you'd have to convince people that having trash everywhere is bad somehow. Not sure how you do that without pride in your community, which many people seem to lack these days.

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CappinPop@reddit

Fix the fucking potholes first then we'll get to the trash. Our roads compared to other EU countries is shocking i love driving abroad because im not havinf to constantly swerve, it would for sure increase the beauty of england some.nice crisp.new Tarmac

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Thegrillman2233@reddit

Civic sense lessons for all new immigrants

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Delicious-Cut-7911@reddit

Our town organises locals to do a litter pick once a month.

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ImpressNice299@reddit

Re-employ street sweepers and enforcement patrols and make it easier for people to get rid of rubbish. It isn't rocket science. It's just expensive.

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FighterJock412@reddit

Throw more rubbish to cover it up.

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Gamma-Master1@reddit

Lock litterers in the stocks and pelt them with rubbish.

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plant-cell-sandwich@reddit

*rubbish

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Meanwhile-in-Paris@reddit

Bring back the pillory. https://preview.redd.it/1gi6wd5jvame1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0782174b344bc7726c520f999009f162df588194

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TawnyTeaTowel@reddit

Upvote for not mistakenly calling this the stocks.

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Hopeful-Shelter-5540@reddit

Deportation and more bin collections.

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TawnyTeaTowel@reddit

Also the price of carrots and Gary Linekers shoe size and … sorry, I thought we were listing irrelevancies.

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KilmarnockDave@reddit

I fucking hate litter. I'd be supportive of Singapore style strict laws around it. Although we'd actually have to employ some police officers to enforce this.

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New-Preference-5136@reddit

https://waster.com.au/the-absence-of-rubbish-bins-in-japan/#:\~:text=Japan's%20lack%20of%20public%20rubbish,home%20or%20in%20designated%20areas. Take a leaf out of Japan's book

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Chicken_shish@reddit

Death penalty for people who throw rubbish out of cars?

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Meanwhile-in-Paris@reddit

Yesterday I saw a seagull teaching her young to empty out the bins for food. Sometimes we blame other humans for trash but the gulls, foxes and other critters have a lot to do with the street mess.

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Express-Training5428@reddit

There isn't any trash. Loads of rubbish...but no trash.

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nacnud_uk@reddit

Castrate any shabby bastard that throws stuff away as if they are the main character and everyone else can pick up their crap. Morons.

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TypicalPen798@reddit

With Hillingdon council potential going bankrupt it’s just going to get worse.

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farmerpip@reddit

https://preview.redd.it/d8sbsgtftame1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0afcb7a0d8f63152ccfc068f630960bcc22d4585 This was in a lay-by in the Peak District just over a week ago. Uphill battle when you have people prepared to dump crap like this.

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HelloW0rldBye@reddit

Dog shit everywhere now adays. Its getting worse by the month

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RumJackson@reddit

More community service instead of short prison sentences for minor offences

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TwoBadRobots@reddit

I was thinking this today on my way home down the M1, so much rubbish along the motorway but how can you send a crew to clear it without shutting down lanes.

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Over-Collection3464@reddit

Promote The Great British Spring clean [https://www.keepbritaintidy.org/get-involved/support-our-campaigns/great-british-spring-clean](https://www.keepbritaintidy.org/get-involved/support-our-campaigns/great-british-spring-clean)

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MDK1980@reddit

The only thing to do is to make sure that people are educated to have pride in their surroundings, and for councils to invest more money into cleaning everything (looking at recent stats, it's at the very bottom of the budget). Unfortunately, neither will ever happen.

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IsWasMaybeAMefi@reddit

Get a Wombles group going. https://thewomblescommunity.com/get-involved/litter-picking/

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Ilovevinylme@reddit

Grab a broom and shovel

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Maleficent_Wash7203@reddit

To hit the litterers with 😉

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kipha01@reddit

Encourage everyone to pick it up and no one to drop it.

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boldstrategy@reddit

Singapore style.

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