Litter: What's changed? Why now?

Home for me is a little outside the village on one of the country lanes.

I can’t help notice the amount of litter. Each weekend I remove it from around a mile of road near my house but yet it comes straight back.

There’s no pavement and few people walk this way so it must be thrown out of cars.

It’s bad. As bad or perhaps worse than what happened to the countryside during the Covid lockdowns.

And it’s not just a Tattenhall issue. It’s everywhere you look.

My completely unscientific observation is that it’s mainly fast food, energy drinks, coffee cups and alcohol - predominantly beer cans dropped by drivers (really?).

The photo is a recent example of rubbish collected from around 1/2 mile of country lane – only 7 days after the last clean up

So what’s changed? Why now? Did I just get sensitised to the issue?

Perhaps there’s some social media influencer telling people that it’s ok to throw rubbish out of their cars.

Maybe it’s the effect of some high profile and less progressive politicians (no names mentioned) calling for the removal of environmental protections.

Perhaps increasing consumerism and acceptance of a throw away society?

Or could it be reduction in funding for local authorities who would otherwise pay street cleaning teams?

Do the perpetrators not know or perhaps not care about resource efficiency, recycling, microplastics and biodiversity?

Inspiration for the Venn diagram taken from the ever wonderful Edith Pritchett

Whatever the reason, and however futile, I’ll keep picking it up and I thank all those that do similar.

On a good day litter picking makes me feel better by doing something positive for an area that I love. On a less good day it does little to help my faith in humanity and makes me think of the demise of social responsibility.

I don’t delude myself that people motivated to engage with Transition Tattenhall are responsible for or want/ need to amend their behaviour in response to these thoughts.

But perhaps it will raise awareness of the issue and prompt discussion within your social circles.

You can read more about why Waste and Recycling is important to the community of Tattenhall here