Bill Bryson on "Fly-Tipping"
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 04.17.08
Only author Bill Bryson could write such a paean against littering (or "fly-tipping" as they evidently call it over in the UK) :
Nowhere in the world is there a landscape more lovely to behold, more comfortable to be in, more artfully worked, more visited and walked across and gazed upon than the countryside of England. It is a glorious achievement and much too lovely to trash.
That is why he is leading a Campaign to Protect Rural England to clean it up. He must of learned about the Broken Window theory while living in America, for he writes:
"Litter breeds more litter. That is a simple, immutable fact. Clean environments tend to stay clean; dirty ones always get dirtier. If a local authority allows rubbish to pile up along its roadsides, the message it sends to people driving past is: “Go ahead and drop some more. We don't care about our corner of England. Why should you?”A key component of his plan is a deposit return system, suggesting that it would not only encourage recycling and discourage random discarding, but also give litter a value, which makes it attractive as a revenue source for Scouts, church groups, homeless people and a wholesomely wide range of others. (this is true, when deposits on wine and liquor bottles came to Ontario this year, it created an industry and income for the homeless.)
All we want, after all, is to make Britain's countryside what it was almost everywhere until very recently and what most of us still want it to be - a place of beauty, delight and sometimes utter perfection. We may not entirely succeed, but at least we'll try. The real worry with litter, it seems to me, is not those who drop it, but the millions who look at it and do nothing.::Times Online
At TreeHugger, we say "Recycling on the taxpayers nickel as we do it now not the answer, it is time for producer responsibility and zero waste. Put a deposit on everything from automobiles to small appliances to hamburger clamshells to water bottles to coffee cups and see how much less garbage we have about." ::It's Time for Deposits. On Everything.
I believe fly tipping is the term for dumping a truck load of rubbish in an out of the way country lane, often blocking it entirely...
Does that mean you're tipping flies like you tip waiters at a restaurant?
Or is it you're giving them a hot tip on where to eat?
I don't get it ... er, but I agree, the English Countryside is a pretty amazing place and just as bad as any to see covered in hamburger wrappers and cans and old tires.
Yeah, fly tipping in cities generally refers to using the skips (industrial size bins) for dumping your own rubbish, mostly big stuff like a sofa or something. But it generally means throwing a lot of rubbish in an unauthorized place. I guess that would include litter, but we also use the word litter. Regardless, go Bill! I think the deposit idea is spot on.
I think people also should be encouraged to pick up litter. I live in a small town in NZ and each day we walk into the main street for coffee we pick up bottles, cans and general trash and put it in the plentiful litter bins along the street.
It is only a minority of people who drop litter, but it is only a minority of people who clean it up too.
it's so gratifying to see this!
I've been on what feels like a one-man campaign to pick up litter for several years now: Every time I'm out and about on foot, I pick up at least one piece of litter. If I'm out for exercise, I'll pick up EVERY piece I see--you'd be astonished to see how much there is in as little as one or two blocks (and I live in a very nice upper-middle-class suburb.)
I'm convinced that most people just don't "see" litter--it's literally and figuratively "beneath" them. And I suspect that on some level, if you don't "see" it--it doesn't "exist". (I'm also convinced that people have internalized their Mother's voice from when they were two: "Don't touch that--it's dirty!"
You should see the puzzled looks I get from people when they see me picking up litter. One in several hundred will stop and compliment me--but few have ever joined me.
The prevailing attitude seems to be that someone else will deal with it. But think about this: If, say, 30% of people litter--and the other 70% just walk by it--who can REALLY be said to be responsible for our litter problem?
If everyone just picked up ONE piece of litter every day...
OK, now this is the perfect venue where I can write about the most significant voluntary environmental project in my country.
One day 2 people just had enough of illegally dumped litter and they started a campain that is reaching out to 40000 volunteers to clean up more than 10000 tons of trash. How they plan to do it can be found in the official campain site (in english):
http://www.teeme2008.ee/?op=body&id=19
The best and the most innovative part of their initiative is the use of GPS and Google Earth apps. to locate, mark and assign the trash sites to registered clean-up parties. Heres one example of the trash-map from my neck of the woods:
http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&f=q&hl=en&z=12&q=http:%2F%2Fdb.teeme2008.ee%2Fdb.py%2Fdb.kmz%3Fvallad%3D9001
Some of the indicated (click on the circles to view info) dump-sites have photos attached to give You idea of just what it looks like. Others have descriptions including the size and content of the pile (most are tires, construction waste and old home appliances/furniture)
D-Day is 3rd of May. If this turns out as well as it is planned, it might even deserve some coverage in Treehugger;)