Any litter pickers here?

Just wondered if anyone here was a fellow litter pickers? I joined the Big Tidy Up last year and helped bag up 25 sacks of litter from the local hedgerows and woodlands. Its quite addictive once you get going though I did feel a bit embarrassed at first and thought people might think I was doing Community service or something. I normally go out walking with a carrier bag and a pair of gloves so I can collect litter as we go. What annoys me more than any other kind of litter is dog poo bags. I really don't understand these people that go to the effort of bagging their dogs poo only to leave the bag! its just weird and gives us good dog owners a bad name.

We go up and down our little country lane regularly and recycle what can be and landfil the rest. Our parish has an annual litterpick of all the lanes as well..

I must admit I am continually astonished that people would come all the way out here in a car to stop at the side of the lane on the verge to eat McD stuff, drink cans of lager (and have sex, sometimes!) I know we live in a pretty part of the world, but to do that just parked at the road side?

Very odd...you think they would go and park up in the local woods ( where there are car parks well inside the woodland), rather than just pull over and stop. A Big Mac and a can of lager could surely wait another 5 min to get to shelter?


We also get dumping of stuff by folk too bone idle to go to the HWS or put it in their bin. Grrr. Sometime we have to get Env Health to come and sort it out.

Anyway, yes we litter pick

kramer wrote:I did feel a bit embarrassed at first and thought people might think I was doing Community service or something.

avoid wearing a chunky ankle bracelet while doing it.

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:

kramer wrote:I did feel a bit embarrassed at first and thought people might think I was doing Community service or something.

avoid wearing a chunky ankle bracelet while doing it.

or a Hi Viz jacket....

haha yeah I must stop wearing those trousers with arrows on them

Do we litter pick? No. I live in France.

We really, really, really notice the litter in England. It horrible!

Basically the mayors knows if he doesn't keep the place looking nice he won't get re-elected.
But it doesn't seem to get dropped as much, there does seem to be a different attitude here. Fly tipping in the woods seems to be a no-no too.

We're too far from the coast to go regularly, though I really love the sea. I get fed up with the amount of rubbish at the coast, and try to pick up what I can. (Mr D brings the more aesthetic flotsam home to make things with.) I won't forget sitting on the beach at Lyme Regis eating sandwiches with the children, and as I looked around I slowly realised that we were having our lunch amid a collection of what I shall call 'sewage related items.' The town had an exhibition about their new sewage system and how much better it would make the town, and I'm afraid I gave the person who was representing the water firm in the exhibition a hard time. (It embarrassed the children but made me feel better!!)

Zoe wrote:Do we litter pick? No. I live in France.

We really, really, really notice the litter in England. It horrible!

Basically the mayors knows if he doesn't keep the place looking nice he won't get re-elected.
But it doesn't seem to get dropped as much, there does seem to be a different attitude here. Fly tipping in the woods seems to be a no-no too.

Something that impressed me a great deal in my trips to France was staggering back to my ship at stupid o'clock in the morning & seeing the streets being washed with spraying machines as a matter of routine I especially noticed it in St Malo for some reason, perhaps it is one of my favourite places I have visited...

I wish our country would make more effort. When I was growing up there were adverts on the TV and public information announcements about litter, how to cross the roads and the Country Code.

Its nice to hear that many of you litter pick as well. I think the days of counting on the local authority to provide this kind of service are well and truly over for us. Fly tipping is a problem where I live, but I think this is mainly because the local rubbish dump has become so picky about the items they'll take. Its still no excuse though.

Our local radio has a "don't be a tosser" campagne yearly.. so we do that...and get Litter angel certificates... find it quite depressing to be honest, we all went out and cleared this bike park thingy in the local woods, phoned the Council who were happy to come collect all the rubbish.... 2days later.... back to a tip... I'd hang fly tippers up by their toes...... til the squealed, personally...

Mind you.. when I was about 5.. my Ma sent me, my sis and bro to go litter picking with a wheel barrow, basically to get us out of her hair I think... she got a bit of a shock when we came back with a barrow full of "naked lady" mags... We'd collected some dumped porn mags....
I think we may well have had some 50 squillion questions for her for a while after....

I approached a very big guy with his 'big' family who had pulled over near my old house and were busily chucking rubbish out their windows.
'excuse me I think you've dropped something'

daring to look back a few minutes later no rubbish and no car containing family. I did shake for a long time after though

Why?

Why should I be scared to ask someone not to drop litter I don't know

When I was a councillor I often pointed out to litterers that they were pay for it to be picked up through their council tax.

On more than one occasion a car driver sitting in a traffic cue found the rubish they had just thrown out of their window land back in the car with a "I think you dropped this!" remark from me. If well timed they did not have time to react as the traffic had started moving again!