Design Practice: Collection 100

20 Facts

The most commonly-found litter is cigarette ends, followed by sweet and food wrappers.

An estimated 122 tons of cigarette butts and cigarette-related litter is dropped every day across the UK.

More than 100,000 trolleys go astray from supermarkets each year. Many end up obstructing paths, spoiling beauty spots or polluting rivers and ponds.

Any type of litter takes a long time to disappear naturally, so whatever the material the right thing to do is not to drop it in the first place.

Degradability depends on climate and circumstances, but under unfavorable conditions estimated time spans can be as long as:-

In 2007 public litter made up 35% of the total litter found on UK beaches
In 2007 fishing debris made up 14% of all beach litter
In 2007 Sewage related debris (SRD) made up 6% of all beach litter
Cotton bud sticks make up 78% of all SRD on UK beaches
An estimated 1.5-2 million items of sanitary products are flushed down the toilet each year in the UK
Even in areas with secondary sewage treatment, raw sewage can enter the sea via combined sewer overflows
The public rates SRD as the most offensive form of visual beach pollution
80% of all pollution in seas and oceans comes from land-based activities
Thousands of marine mammals are killed by litter each year
Plastic makes up over half of beach litter every year
The UK uses 5 million tonnes of plastic per year
Plastic is estimated to take 450 -1,000 years to break down
Plastic will never biodegrade – it just breaks up into smaller pieces – plastic dust
Many hand cleaners and body scrubs contain tiny pieces of plastic
Plastic items are the most common objects sighted at sea

20 Opinions

hey can’t be bothered or are too lazy to find a bin
They have no sense of pride in their community
There is a lack of education / poor parenting of young people
If an area is already dirty, why bother to look for a bin?
People don’t appreciate the consequences of littering
We live in throwaway society with a ‘snack culture’ and too much packaging
It’s not cool to use a bin
Litter keeps someone in a job
People aren’t aware that some items are litter eg food, cigarette ends, chewing gum
It’s OK to litter if no one can see you!
It’s OK to litter if you are drunk!
There aren’t enough bins
The bins are in the wrong place
The bins aren’t emptied often enough
The bins aren’t big enough
The bins are not suitable for disposing of dog mess or cigarette ends
The bins are dirty
There aren’t enough fines for littering
One person can’t make a difference
It’s rebellious and anti-authoritarian to litter (is it?)
Fast food outlets don’t care about the litter associated with them
Everybody does it!
The Council aren’t doing their job properly
There are much worse things in the world to worry about than litter .

20 Words

20 Statistics

Taxpayer Cost of Litter in England and Wales

In 1963 the cost to local taxpayer in England and Wales was £13 Million.
Current cost of litter in England and Wales- £450 Million – Plus add in the costs with litter from parks and other public places.
An Excess of 30 Million Tones of LItter are collected from DEFRS and ENCAMS (Previously Tidy Britain Group) every year.
ENCAMS- spend between £6 and £19 per kilometer to sweep the streets.
More than 100,000 trolleys go astray from supermarkets each year. The cost of recovering them from rivers, ponds and beauty spots is estimated at £5 million.
According to ENCAMS local Environmental Quality Survey of England 2006/07, smoking related litter was found in 78% of all locations surveyed. An estimated 122 tones of cigarette butts, matchsticks and other cigarette related litter are dropped every day across the UK. It costs an estimated £342 million per year to clean up the 200 million cigarette butts thrown away every day by UK smokers

Types of Litter

90% of Drivers find that litter on the roadsides irritating and disgusting.
The amount of fast food litter, especially within the past decade has risen quickly and is one of the top three forms of litter reported to the Council. National data in 2003 has confirmed this by stating that it rose by 12% – with items such as sweet wrappers, crisp packets and takeaway litter rising by 6%
Nationally the number of drinks cartons on our streets during this period has also risen by 11%, together with a rise of by 7% for fast food dumped with these types of litter.
Over 90% of England’s streets are blighted with cigarette ends, cigarette packets and matches.
An estimated 122 tons of cigarette butts and cigarette-related litter is dropped every day across the UK.

Top Littered fast food brands in England

Rats

The increase in presence of both fast food and fast food related litter has helped to dramatically swell the resident rat population within Britain to over 60 million – that’s more than the number of humans currently living within the country.
Figures show that no person is more than 10 meters from a rat at anytime in the day. The increasing rat populations within the UK mean that we are greater at threat of catching Weil’s disease from rats’ urine. Weil’s disease can lead to kidney and liver failure and eventually death

Fires

Figures provided by DEFRA state that almost 40% of outdoor fires each year are litter and refuse related fires and ones that can be easily avoided.

Drugs

Increasingly drugs related litter is becoming a problem. This was confirmed in a survey in 2001 within the UK, in which 66% of councils with a seaside boundary found drugs and drug related paraphernalia such as needles, syringes, and blood infected material to mention but a few, upon their beaches. In this same research 68% of councils also found needles in public toilets and that over 20,000 discarded and potentially infected needles were found in the UK last year (2001) in parks, public toilets, churchyards, abandoned cars and even on beaches.
In 2001, 214 people, including 17 children, were either stabbed by or injured picking up this drugs-related litter.
The places where most Local Authorities found contaminated needles and drug related paraphernalia were in parks and playing fields with 72% of them finding them here and over 64% of Councils had removed needles from residential gardens.

Balloons

There are an average of 11.5 balloons or balloon pieces found on every km of UK beaches
Balloons are known to be ingested by several marine species including dolphins, whales, sharks and seabirds
Turtles are thought to mistake balloons as jellyfish, their main prey species
Balloon ties are made of plastic strapping, which entangles animals and can be lethal

Monday, 14 February 2011