LIKE most people in this country, I have a dislike of littering and the antisocial people who decorate our streets with their rubbish.
There’s something worryingly mindless and selfish about the people who leave their empty bottles or sweet wrappers on the floor.
However, like watching a grown adult on an e-scooter, my disapproval only warrants a shake of the head until I get back to my day.
In a bid to fuel a more passionate fire against littering, but mostly because it wouldn’t be something I enjoy, my news editor suggested I should get out there one morning and tidy Bournemouth’s streets.
And so, the following Saturday at 7am, I found myself standing in the street with a bin bag ready to pick up after lazy people.
I was also shadowing Peter Calladine, one of a thousand volunteers at Dorset Devils and a man who is starting to become the poster boy for anti-littering after picking up 3,000 pieces of litter in one street.
Read more: Three thousand pieces of litter picked up in one Bournemouth road
Read more: BCP Council issued zero fines for littering over a year
Foraging through the streets for Friday night’s discarded kebab trays and bottles, it became apparent very quickly the litter situation is worse than you’d imagine.
For a start, cigarette butts are everywhere. In every single nook and cranny. But surprisingly most litter isn’t left on the pavement, it’s hidden in bushes and behind walls.
More than 20 minutes into litter picking along St Swithun’s Road, Peter and I filled two bin bags full of litter. It was almost effortless, but definitely shocking.
After an hour of rummaging through hedges and trying not to think about what I was picking up, we emptied two more bags of litter into a nearby bin on Derby Road.
BCP Council spend £1m a year cleaning our beaches of litter. During the heatwave weekend when we were all enjoying the sun, we left more than 70 tonnes of rubbish along the shorelines.
As far as I can tell, though, littering is a huge problem for this conurbation. So rather than shaking my head this time, I’d like to leave litterers a very simple message: pick your litter up and put it in the bin. Simple.
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