I’m sick of picking up and binning Costa & McD’s litter that mouth breathing scum have failed to put in a bin.
I know legislation is in place to prevent littering but that doesn’t work if the litterer isn’t caught in the act.

So I was thinking if I could invoice the original supplier of the end litter for tidying their shit up. I know the litter belongs to the mouth breather who bought it but the supplier clearly hasn’t given enough information on how too deal with the packaging once used.

(Mild mannered STW log burner, Sandvik axe, single speed owning rant over)

Sorry, you aren’t allowed the log burner any more. That was discussed last week.

On a serious note, I have often thought about a litter tax on these big offenders, where the money is actually directly used to pay for it to be cleaned up and recycled.

Buy an Audi before I respond 😉 and don’t forget proper sourdough or artisanal products.
Another of my pet hates is the never ending stream of junk mail; I’m at the point where I will collect a few week’s worth and then waste an evening dumping it on the counter of whichever shitty outlets paid a minimal fee to have it pushed through my letterbox by some overworked & underpaid postie who really doesn’t GaF.

It’s not the organisation that drops the litter, is it? It’s lazy people with no sense of personal responsibility. Focus on the cause and not the symptom. I visited both named establishments yesterday and managed to get all the resulting rubbish into a bin.

Costa will recycle any cups you take in to them, McDonald’s have loads of bins around their sites and staff litter pick in the vicinity.

I’m all in favour of the drive throughs printing the reg no on the packaging to trace and fine the litter louts

I visited both named establishments yesterday

You monster

This mornings 1hour walk resulted in McD’s 3drink cups and 2flurry’s in 4 locations.
How much should I invoice? The distance to bins varies.

Are you collecting the stickers from the sides of the cups for a free drink?

The local McDs has a litter picker who also attends the parrish council meetings to be moaned at and gets told which parrish councillors street they have to keep clean.

My local McD’s has a litter picker as well but they don’t venture as far as the local county lines drop off points/dogging/smoking or poking car parks*

*I’m not involved in any of the above – not at 6am anyway

It’s not the organisation that drops the litter, is it?

No, but you can pass the cost on via the organisation to those that are dropping the litter. Although that’s be spread out amongst those that put there’s in a bin too. Which might even encourage some to just dump litter, as they’ve paid for it to be picked up.

I’m all in favour of the drive throughs printing the reg no on the packaging to trace and fine the litter louts

Spiffing idea, fancy an MP’s job?

Tax and punitive measures don’t work and require expensive admin.

Shift it into a profit motive and you’ll get results.

Put a simple value on every piece of potential litter ie deposit scheme incorporated in the price, and within weeks there will be no litter on the streets. The kids will make sure of that… 🙂

And how many Coke bottles and Walkers crisp bags did you see?

And fag ends?

It’s not the makers, or the retailer, it’s the morons who drop it. You are enabling them by not even putting them in your crosshairs

But they are a harder target than a big shop with lights on the outside

the supplier clearly hasn’t given enough information on how too deal with the packaging once used

I don’t think that follows, some people will deliberately ignore such information in order to prove that they don’t care about anyone outside their circle.

You can invoice anyone, but it doesn’t mean that have to pay you. If enough people do it, it might irritate them enough for them to do something.

Shift it into a profit motive and you’ll get results.

Put a simple value on every piece of potential litter ie deposit scheme incorporated in the price, and within weeks there will be no litter on the streets. The kids will make sure of that

Excellent idea.

epicyclo +1

Discarded McD wrapper = 1 point.
Points = meals.
Win.

At my local surf club in Aus we’re part of the Take 3 For the Sea initiative. Under this we had all the nippers run a 15 minute beach clean-up last weekend. Bear in mind this is what you would consider a fairly litter-free beach, the kids collected just under 7kg of rubbish. By count it was assorted plastic and cigarette ends that were the highest. However, where we identified branded waste, e.g. coffee cups from the local coffee shops, we were able to take this back to them with the aim of starting a conversation about what they could do to encourage e.g. the use of keep cups with a 50c discount. Feedback was pretty warm, but here you;re dealing largely with independent shops that are locally owned by people with pride in their beach. Whilst I am imagining Costa and McDs are less likely to respond at that level, no-one wants their brand associated with negative imagery so a similar collection might help high-light the problem to them and drive change?

…and yes, it’s the morons that drop litter that have the primary responsibility to change but we also want to address this one or two steps back in the chain if we can.

And how many Coke bottles and Walkers crisp bags did you see?

A few coke/red bull/generic energy drink cans and bottles that were collected and binned but McD’s and Costa are the prominent litter in my town.

Would that be because there has recently been a McD’s and Costa open?

And the locals are so badly reared that they don’t know how to behave with the leftovers?

It’s terrible round here for McD’s et al. The park and ride is opposite the retail park (which is being extended*) where they’re all at and within a 3 mile radius are no end of takeaway packages dumped out of cars. The Park and Ride is disgraceful, most the time thick with litter which I complain about (go me!) but the councils are power(money)less to do much about. CCTV would rake in the littering fines, until the scum get wise and go elsewhere.

*I wrote to the retail park developer yesterday (again, go me!) and asked for their plan to prevent littering. Of course, I expect a weak / non response. I think it’s coming at a bigger level what with the plastics fury just now, whether it will affect paper packaging I doubt and it kind of screws McD’s takeaway model so they’ll fight it.

Boils me piss, I tell thee!

It’s not the makers, or the retailer

This message was brought to you in conjunction with the PR departments of MdD’s and Costa.

If they stopped selling shite in single use containers then they wouldnt get droped.

Does Coke need to come from the shop in a metal can or plastic bottle with all the resources and processing (and hopefully end of life re processing) that goes into it?

Its that or change the loyalty card schemes to ‘bring any 6 pieces of waste in anf get a free burger/coffee/sandwich so they have to deal with the mess they create.

At least Subway now ask/charge for the packageing (beyond the paper the sandwich is wrapped in).

I’m all in favour of the drive throughs printing the reg no on the packaging to trace and fine the litter louts

*like*

This message was brought to you in conjunction with the PR departments of MdD’s and Costa.

What a depressingly boneheaded response.

Does Coke need to come from the shop in a metal can or plastic bottle with all the resources and processing (and hopefully end of life re processing) that goes into it?

Of course it does. Otherwise it would not be a portable food item. It’s never an issue when you go into a pub or caff and sit down and consume with washable plates and reusable cutlery and glasses, but take away ‘fast’ food needs to be transported somehow. Should you cup your hands to receive drink from a tap?

There is nothing wrong with containers for food; they serve a purpose. There’s much wrong with people who don’t dispose properly.

How does ‘end of life reprocessing’ work without it being fed into a waste stream but left on a grass verge?

Would you really watch some arse chuck a Big Mac wrapper on the floor and think “bloody McDonalds” or would you think ‘dirty bstard’?

In Germany they do several things.

1, You are responsible for keeping the street clean outside your home, you can/will be fined for not doing so. This teaches everyone a little social responsibility, when you have to pick up the rubbish from your patch on a weekly basis then most people will think a little bit more about what they discard.

2, There is a deposit for bottles and cans, which leads to most being returned, and OAP’s (not kids as suggested above) going round looking for deposits to return.

3, Tax is higher, as a clean environment is seen as more important money gets spent on public bins, manpower to regularly empty them. Also more manpower for street cleaning duties in town centres etc.

There is still a problem, just nowhere near as bad as the UK. One of the things that always strikes me these days when I return back to Britain is just how filthy the place is, whereas before I moved out it was just normalised.

Whilst in the states I was pretty taken aback from the big signs on the side of the roads warning of a $10,000 fine for littering. Ten Grand!!!
I thought it was pretty extreme, but then noticed the almost complete lack of litter….

Whilst in the states I was pretty taken aback from the big signs on the side of the roads warning of a $10,000 fine for littering. Ten Grand!!!

They do take it seriously, case in point 😁

Compulsory £3 refundable charge on all cans, bottles, plastic (or plastic lined) cups, etc. If the person who bought it doesn’t care enough to bring it back to the shop/cafe someone else will. Our local junkies would love it.

Mcdonalds, Costa & all the usual places should take more responsibility in educating the peabrained scruffy tramps that buy from them that chucking their crap around the countryside is showing that your’e a dick.

Alanis morissette.

At the coffee shop at our local beach, they have a couple of buckets for kids to go collecting litter with. 1 bucket full = 1 hot chocolate.

Spoke to the owner – they said it has worked so well that they have had to buy smaller buckets, because it’s now taking the kids too long to fill up the larger ones

There’s terrible litter along the street I walk down to get to the supermarket. People park on it to do car shares, and some people just open their doors to get out and throw their litter out at the same time.

This is apalling, but it’s not that many people that do it. Usually when I walk to the shop I take a couple of pieces of litter with me. This actually makes a noticeable difference. If everyone picked up a piece, it’d be gone in no time.

Compulsory £3 refundable charge on all cans, bottles, plastic (or plastic lined) cups, etc.

This would work well! A can of Coke instantly becomes £3.80+, hardly anyone would buy cans, bottles, plastic (or plastic lined) cups, etc. again! Problem solved…

This would work well! A can of Coke instantly becomes £3.80+, hardly anyone would buy cans, bottles, plastic (or plastic lined) cups, etc. again! Problem solved…

We can see how bringing your own thermos mug is an easy and green friendly way to buy a takeaway hot coffee to consume later, but how exactly do you propose people get a carbonated soft drink?

but how exactly do you propose people get a carbonated soft drink?

You buy it in a bottle that costs £3 + 80p for the contents, when you want another you exchange the bottle for a full one so it only costs 80p.

The penalties for dropping litter need to be more meaningful – and fund resources to identify litter droppers.

My solution would be:

– £500 on the spot fine for one item + 10 hours of litter picking
– If they can’t pay then 50 hours of litter picking

And then a multiplier for more than one item and / or repeat offence

We can see how bringing your own thermos mug is an easy and green friendly way to buy a takeaway hot coffee to consume later, but how exactly do you propose people get a carbonated soft drink?

In exactly the same way!? Pubs and restaurants have soft drinks on pumps…

Of course it does. Otherwise it would not be a portable food item. It’s never an issue when you go into a pub or caff and sit down and consume with washable plates and reusable cutlery and glasses, but take away ‘fast’ food needs to be transported somehow. Should you cup your hands to receive drink from a tap?

Because part of the whole raison d’etre of a bottle is it’s re-useable. Medieval man didn’t wander around ye-olide england buying leather flasks of cholera saturated water did they? no they filled them up in a stream and died in their 30’s.

The fact that we’re hell bent on single use everything as is as much the problem as anything else. It it wasn’t single use, then it would have some intrinsic value and wouldn’t get dumped in the hedge. Stick a dispenser machine in the shop rather than selling cans, charge people for the cups/bottles, problem goes away.

Blaming some untraceable final user might be correct, but does eff all to solve the problem.

Stick a dispenser machine in the shop rather than selling cans, charge people for the cups/bottles, problem goes away.

It doesn’t though, does it. That might work for drinks, ignoring the abuse the system would get (free refills! Yay!) it won’t work for other foods.

Bring your own paper bag to the dispenser and fill it with crisps or biscuits or cornflakes or flour? Nah.

Like it or not packaging does serve a purpose. If it was only fed back into the waste stream it could be recycled, but lazy people are lazy. In your example above if you forget your own bottle you buy another anyway, so who would win? The retailer

In your example above if you forget your own bottle you buy another anyway, so who would win? The retailer

Temporarily yes, but next time I would bring back 2 bottles. And get the £6 back.