Anti-litter campaigning group Keep Britain Tidy launched its Litter Prevention Commitment today (15 May), at the Tidy Britain All Party Parliamentary Group in the House of Commons.
The commitment asks businesses to sign up to a commitment to help prevent litter from arising, thus ‘solving the litter problem’.
It asks businesses to focus on three principles:
- to raise awareness of the social, economic and environmental impact of litter;
- to encourage responsible consumer behaviour in order to reduce the amount of litter dropped; and
- to contribute to a reduction in the £1 billion cost of cleaning up litter by ‘taking positive action’.
Businesses that sign up will be asked to make a financial contribution to support the co-ordination and promotion of the scheme, and also to think about their clean up costs, product and packaging design, recycling promotion, support of anti-litter campaigns and wider social responsibility and the environment.
Several companies have already signed up to the commitment, including food companies McDonald’s, KFC, Coca-Cola Enterprises and Wrigley.
Keep Britain Tidy aims to see 20 corporations sign up initially, with the hopes of extending the commitment to make it suitable for public bodies, non-government organisations, educational establishments, and individuals to sign up to in the near future.
Phil Barton, Chief Executive at Keep Britain Tidy said at the launch today: “Litter and littering is unsightly, costs a fortune to clean up and has substantial negative effects; socially, economically and environmentally. Everyone must play their part in solving the problem. We believe the Litter Prevention Commitment will be a fundamentally important tool in driving the change we all want to see.”
Litter Survey for England 2014
As well as launching the Litter Prevention Commitment, Keep Britain Tidy has also been working on the ‘Litter Survey for England 2014’.
Commissioned by the Industry Council for research on Packaging & the Environment (INCPEN), the survey found that types of litter have ‘hardly changed’ since the first survey in 1996.
The charity found that the most frequently littered items in England this year are cigarette butts (30 per cent) and chewing gum (24 per cent). Food and drink packaging makes up a large proportion of waste littered too, with 6.5 per cent of litter comprising drinks containers, 13 per cent made up of confectionery and snack packaging, and 2.9 per cent being fast food related (see table below).
As such, INCPEN is calling on everyone – individuals, banks, newspaper publishers, post offices, manufacturers and retailers – to work together with local and central government to stamp out litter.
Jane Bickerstaffe, INCPEN Director said: “It’s time for a new concerted attack on litter. There are a number of campaigning bodies all with the same objective but with different initiatives. Let’s pool resources and work together.”
Barton commented: “Keep Britain Tidy was pleased to conduct this litter count in England for INCPEN. We are focused on tackling all types of litter and have recently launched our Litter Commitment, which we are inviting companies and other organisations to sign up to. We commend INCPEN for helping to gather important evidence relating to the composition of littered items.”
Litter composition ranked by type 1996, 2004, 2008 and 2014
| 1996 | 2004 | 2008 | 2014 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chewing gum | Chewing gum | Chewing gum | Cigarette butts |
| Cigarette ends | Cigarette ends | Cigarette ends | Chewing gum staining |
| Matches | Sweet wrappers | Sweet wrappers | Confectionery pkg |
| Bits of paper | Cigarette related | Cigarette related | Smokers’ materials |
| Sweet papers | Soft drink plastic bottles | Food and drink | Fast food packaging |
| Glass fragments | Gum wrappers | Soft drinks cans | Non-alcoholic tops |
| Plastic fragments | Soft drinks cans | Soft drink plastic bottles | Non-alcoholic cans |
| Tin foil | Snack packaging | Fast food packaging | Other Packaging |
| Gum wrappers | Fast food packaging | Soft drink bottle tops | Non-alcoholic bottles |
| Tickets | Post Office elastic bands | Snack packaging | Other |
Composition of litter in Scotland
Keep Scotland Beautiful carried out a similar survey for INCPEN over the same period of time as the English survey, in 120 sites in Scotland (30 each in Edinburgh, Falkirk, Renfrewshire, Inverness).
This was part of 'Towards a Litter-Free Scotland', a national litter strategy that started in 2013. The final version of this strategy is due for release in summer this year.
It found that the two most commonly littered items were either smoking related (39.4 per cent, of which 90 per cent was cigarette ends) aor chewing gum related (45.1 per cent, almost all of which was used chewing gum that had adhered to the ground).
Like in England, food and drink packaging was also a frequently littered item. A comparison of the two surveys can be found below.
| Scotland (%) | England (%) | |
|---|---|---|
| Chewing gum | 45 | 24 |
| Cigarette ends | 36 | 30 |
| Packaging | 11.5 | 24.8 |
| - of which drink containers | 4.3 | 6.5 |
| - of which carrier bags | 0.4 | 0.7 |
| - of which confectionery & snack packaging | 3.6 | 13 |
| - of which fast food packaging | 1 | 2.9 |
| Other | 7.5 | 21.2 |
| TOTAL | 100 | 100 |
Bickerstaffe added: “We commission these surveys because we believe good data is vital to underpin preventative measures and to provide a benchmark against which achievements can be measured.”
Read more about INCPEN’s Composition of Litter in Scotlandand Britain’s Litter Prevention Commitment.
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