The UK needs government, business and the third sector to work together in a partnership approach to establish a national plan to combat litter, delegates have told the Communities and Local Government Committee’s litter inquiry.

On Tuesday (6 January), various representatives of the waste, packaging and foodservice industries backed calls to reduce the amount of waste littered in Britain (which is estimated to cost England £1 billion a year to clean up), through a national education campaign, preferably co-ordinated by central government, relating to the impacts of the illegal practice, and better enforcement of penalties for those caught littering and/or fly-tipping.

‘Identify the cause of litter’

In the second evidence session of the inquiry, the committee heard from David Sedaris, author, broadcaster and litter campaigner; Cherry Lewis-Taylor, franchisee of McDonald's Restaurants Ltd; and Giles Roca, Director General of the Tobacco Manufacturers Association, who argued that despite work being undertaken by retailers, it is unfair to blame retailers for the actions of a ‘tiny, tiny minority’ of people.

Sedaris argued that harsher fines and better enforcement of penalties could be effective in curbing the practice of littering, and referred to the city of Massachusetts in the United States that has a $10,000 (£6,600) penalty for anyone found littering (compared to around £80 in the UK).

He also told the committee that advertising campaigners ridiculing litterers could also help, adding: “I would study litterers, learn what they listen to and what they watch, and make relentless fun of them with commercials. And so that they would fell like ‘wow, that’s me’, and ‘that’s me in a really bad light’. To nail people, that might be a start.”

Lewis-Taylor and Roca both argued that the solution to tackling litter is partnership working, and that a national educational programme to streamline all the different anti-litter messages could help.

Lewis-Taylor said: “It doesn’t need to cost a lot of money to do it, banners, stickers and the will to do it”, while Roca stated: “I think we need to address the core is about why do people drop litter, including cigarettes, and that is about long-term behaviour change. I think enforcement and penalties is one mechanism that can be used and should be used… but if we are serious about addressing the issues of waste then we have to deal with the causation of this, and that is educating people”.

Roca also lamented that there were barriers to the tobacco industry working on litter, such as the Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control (which encourages local authorities (LAs) to reduce the presence of tobacco branding and messaging from the public) and the fact that litter campaigners Keep Britain Tidy have cut ties with the tobacco industry. (The tobacco industry was criticised for distributing industry-branded giveaways such as personal ash trays during KBT’s ‘Love Where You Live’ campaign’, after which it stopped associating with the industry. This campaign is now independently funded.)

He said: “The Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control has effectively stopped LAs from doing business with us on matters such as litter. KBT stopped associating with the tobacco industry in December 2013 and now KBT will not deal with the tobacco industry, local government will not deal with the tobacco industry on litter. We want to do more, we recognised we have a role to play, we want to be part of the solution, absolutely – we also want to contribute expertise and knowledge, but there are barriers that are increasingly being put in a our way because of political reasons around dealing with tobacco that are increasingly harming and hampering the activities that we want to do.”

Roca added that the association has written three times to members of the Local Government Association to invite them to an event on 21 January to talk about how the tobacco industry can help tackle litter, but has yet to receive a response.

The committee voiced frustration that despite delegates championing partnership working, there was little detail on how any national campaigns or enforcement action could be funded.

‘Carrot and stick approach’

Later in the afternoon, Jane Bickerstaffe, Director of the Industry Council for Research on Packaging and the Environment (INCPEN); Jacob Hayler, Executive Director of the Environmental Services Association; Martin Kersh, Executive Director of the Foodservice Packaging Association; and Alex West, Senior Manager for Corporate Affairs at the Wrigley Company Ltd, gave evidence to the inquiry.

Again, the packaging representatives disagreed that retailers should be penalised for litter creation (the committee had suggested that a levy on packaging to pay for litter clean-up could be implemented), arguing that more focus needed to be on tackling the causes of the problem, rather than just the problem itself. The packaging stakeholders also argued that packaging helped to reduce waste (by protecting food, thus limiting unnecessary food waste) and that a levy would add more ‘red tape’ to business (something central government has committed to reducing).

The committee also suggested that there could be merit in redesigning bins for the street-scene, as often the highest occurrences of litter are around bins (perhaps due to wind or the fact that bins may overflow with waste).

However, Hayler focused on the desperate need to ensure that local authorities were adequately resourced and funded to deliver street cleansing services.

He said: “Local authority budgets are extremely stretched at this time…particularly as other waste management costs are facing upward pressure, so any source of funding that help local authorities will be welcomed.”

Hayler also favoured a ‘carrot and stick’ (reward and punishment) approach to combating litter between providing sufficient facilities for people to deposit their waste on the go, whilst at the same time enforcing penalties on offenders.

He said: “People respond to incentives. It needs to be made easier for people to do the right thing through the provision of facilities, but on the other hand you need to have penalties in place for poor behaviour and sufficient enforcement of those penalties.”

Find out more about the litter inquiry or the problems associated with litter.