Andrew Vine: Time to clean up our act over litter epidemic

The grass is still dry enough to sit on, and they are leaning back against the stonework. Heaven alone knows how many others have done likewise on sunny days over the course of the millennium-and-a-half that the tower has stood and York has grown around it, passing along the way through eras of strife and prosperity.

But it’s only in our own era that those who pause for a while and feel history against their backs dump polystyrene food containers and empty pop bottles on the grass and saunter off without thought of picking them up and dropping them in the bin only a few yards away that they have to pass on the way out of the gardens.

A groundsman stood and watched as they left their mess behind, and thanked me for picking it up and putting it in his bag. He’s been doing his job a good while now, and used to remonstrate with those who dropped their litter, but doesn’t bother any more, having grown weary of the abuse he received in return.

It still annoys him, though, as it does me, for its sheer idleness. I don’t suppose the trio of al fresco lunchers were in any real sense bad people, just part of a vast unthinking mass generating a mountain of rubbish that blows across our parks and gardens, our roadsides and beauty spots, defiling ancient and modern sites alike.

Would they do it at home? Almost certainly not. The notion of getting the ingredients for dinner together and then chucking the wrapping from the meat and the vegetable peelings on the kitchen floor would strike them as bizarre in the extreme, so why do it in public?

There were plenty of the chuckers on the A64 driving home from York as well, the fag ends and crisp packets and cartons and drinks bottles sailing out of the car windows and bouncing across the road.

And on the road from Ilkley to Skipton the next day, the ugliest face of littering. All around, the majesty of the Dales; alongside the cars, lay-bys dotted with the bursting black bin bags of fly-tippers, their contents spilling out to be carried up to the moorland by the breeze, those who dumped them the more contemptible for defiling this landscape.

Our councils fight a valiant running battle against the litterers, but it’s always a rearguard action. It’s like a standing army trying to take on guerrillas; for every lay-by cleared during daylight, there’s another attack by the fly-tippers when darkness falls. The councils have also done their best to nudge people towards better behaviour by providing ever more litter bins on the streets.

If this epidemic of littering and dumping has a soundtrack, it’s the harsh fluttering of plastic bags caught in the branches of trees, there to remain for weeks or even months as they gradually shred, becoming ever more unsightly.

The way we live now is partially to blame for the wave of detritus that washes over urban and rural landscape alike, its flotsam and jetsam the wrapping of food grabbed on the hoof and then chucked away or dropped by busy people with too much on their minds, distracted by the next text or email.

But there’s an unpleasant undercurrent of selfishness in it, too. The dropping of litter – and flytipping – is part of the same mindset that cares nothing if bystanders would prefer not to hear the routine effing and blinding that goes with so many conversations. Not my problem, mate. If you don’t like it, you know what you can do. Litter? Not my problem, either. That’s why we have street sweepers, isn’t it?

Well, no actually. We have them to try to make the places we live and work that much more pleasant and healthy to be in for being clean, not to follow the thoughtless around in the manner of a parent tidying up in the wake of an energetic toddler who doesn’t know any better.

The odd thing is that the volume of litter seems to grow even as public awareness of, and concern for, the importance of looking after the environment around us increases. People who embrace the need to recycle, cut down on waste, and minimise pollution see no conflict between doing that and slinging the wrapping that their burger and large fries came in out of the window of their eco-friendly car on the A64.

Maybe it’s time for the sort of public awareness campaign against littering that aims to make it as socially unacceptable as drink-driving. It could be the simplest of messages. In public, do as you would at home. When you’ve finished with it, put it in a bin. And if you’re in your hybrid, green-as-it-gets car, hang onto it until you get back. After all, care of the environment, like charity, begins at home.