Talking Rubbish

On Monday the American writer Bill Bryson presented a program on television about the trash that is dumped in our countryside. For those that don't know, Bill Bryson wrote a book called notes from a small island and clearly is in love with our countryside, and in particular was highly delighted with places like Durham. As that city is only a few miles from where I live, I have to agree with Bill but I will not be offering my car so someone can go and visit it as he does in his book.

Additionally Bill Bryson is the president (or Chairman) of the Council for the Protection of Rural England. It was with that hat on, that he was presenting this program. He has been residing in the UK for a number of years and has seen our rural environment become dirty and littered.

The reasons for this happening are various from people being lazy and disrespectful through to the down right criminal actions of fly tippers who illegally dump rubbish.

Recently there was a strike by Local Authority workers. This industrial action only lasted for two days but the rubbish in the streets of Newcastle piled up very quickly. The city council are very good at keeping the highways and byways clean but it illustrated just how uncaring people are of their own environment. All this casually discarded litter costs the City council millions of pounds. There have been times when I have challenged people who are dropping rubbish and if I don't get sworn at, I will be told that they are keeping the street cleaners employed.

With those sorts of attitudes to overcome there are laws and by-laws in place to help local authorities and the Department of the Environment to tackle the problem of rubbish. But this is where the media adds to the problem. On a regular basis the local papers and TV will run a report of someone being fined for dropping litter. The bias of the story is that of haven't the council got better things to do. Well the answer to that is yes, but while people keep on fouling our streets they need to punish the people they do catch.

Part of the problem is that we have become such a throw away society that people don't care. Even now I take my rubbish home with me. That used to annoy my ex that I always seemed to have rubbish in my pockets. Even now I frequently find that I am having to pick up other peoples rubbish. Many of the items are bottles and cans and can be recycled.

When I was a child most bottles carried a deposit and I remember taking the bottles back to the shop and myself and my siblings buying sweets with the money. When I later first started exploring Epping Forest, on the rare occasion that I would find a discarded bottle I would pick it up and cash it in on my way home. Thinking about it, this probably started my behaviour of acting like a Womble. I am sure that many children were encouraged to keep Britain tidy by this.

This is where the real problem lays. As businesses have become more global they have opted for the cheapest option regard packaging. This is particularly notable with drinks packaging. As plastic and metal cans are lighter to transport they discovered they saved costs on transport. That also enabled them to centralise production and distribution. Therefore, while it looked like a greener, more environmental, doing this actually added to greenhouse gasses because of longer journeys. Also via this switch, they discovered they could ditch one of their costs. This switched the cost of disposing of their rubbish from the business to the local government. In effect this rubbish is now a cost that is born by local taxes and not by the companies that generate the waste.

An example of this has occurred recently when Scottish Courage, the brewery company, stopped taking back the bottles that contained Newcastle Brown Ale. This does not save them the costs of fuel as the dyers have to visit the pubs anyway when delivering the beer and still collect some of the empties. Where they are saving money is via not having to clean the returned ones and the cost of disposing of the bottles is now transferred onto others. This could be the public house, inn or off licence (Liqueur Store), but mainly the cost is born by the community where the product is consumed.

This is not to solely blame the drinks industry for this problem as all industries do this and will often just walk away from the problems they cause. The coal mines here in the North East were always one of the worst industries for this and I can still find places where this type of pollution is still impacting the local area over forty years after the mines closed.

What I can not and have never understood is why anyone would be willing to despoil their own environment? It seems to me that far to often people think that its always someone else's job to do something. When in fact it is our job to keep our own communities clean and tidy.

It is to our shame that an outsider should need to point out the problems we have with rubbish. I personally feel real shame when I meet overseas visitors who feel the need to comment about the litter in our environment. I would rather that or guests leave with memories of the beauty that is Britain.