Memorandum submitted by ENCAMS (Waste
59)
ABOUT ENCAMS AND
LITTER
ENCAMS
— ENCAMS stands for "Environmental
Campaigns" and it is the charity which runs the Keep Britain
Tidy campaign. It is part funded through Defra and receives other
funding through consultancy work and sponsored projects. — The
organisation originated in 1954 with a resolution from the Women's
Institute to "Keep Britain Tidy". We still engage their
205,000 members to take action. — The remit of the organisation
is to improve local environments by campaigning to change the
public's behaviour, providing advice and skills to those who manage
local environments, and promoting action and excellence. — Under
its Keep Britain Tidy brand, ENCAMS currently runs around four
campaigns a year focusing on different litter items. Recent campaigns
saw a 35% decrease in fast food litter in targeted areas, and
a 23% reduction in smoking related litter in the campaign hot
spots.
— Its latest campaign, The Big Tidy
Up, was launched on 1 September and seeks to harness the good
will of the English public and encourage them to organise local
tidy ups. At the time of writing in mid-September over 6,300 groups
have signed up and 3,200 bags of rubbish collected. The target
is to work with 10,000 groups across England. To find out more
visit www.thebigtidyup.org.
— All ENCAMS work is research-led to
ensure that we understand the issues and can target our message
to the right audience, at the right time and place. This involves
use of market research techniques in order to understand public
attitudes and behaviours.
— ENCAMS works with land managers to
share best practice, provide advice, support and new thinking
to the area of local environmental quality. Its Cleaner Safer
Greener Network works with over 140 local authorities and housing
associations, delivering training, awards and problem solving.
— ENCAMS runs Blue Flag for beaches
with 82 Blue Flag currently flying on the English coastline, driving
up standards on our beaches. A further 82 beaches which are well
managed, but unable to meet the highest standards of water quality,
have been approved for Quality Coast Awards.
— ENCAMS also runs an international
sustainable schools programme called Eco-Schools with over 10,000
schools in England signed up. Schools are required to engage pupils
and to undertake continuous improvements linked to the curriculum
and, after evidencing sustained delivery of a school action plan,
are awarded a coverted green flag.
— The organisation carries out the
Local Environmental Quality Survey of England (LEQSE) on behalf
of Defra which is the only detailed survey of its kind measuring
the state of local streets and public spaces where we live, work
and play.
— Litter is not only a result of individuals
dropping it. Businesses failing to properly manage their sites
and activities (skips, vehicles, yards) also contribute to the
problem. Poor storage and collection of both business and domestic
waste also contribute to the litter problem Wind and heavy rain
can spread packaging and other debris from such premises.
— In a number of places ENCAMS supports
local authorities and business improvement districts in running
tidy business award schemes, with considerable success.
— Fly-tipping is closely related to
littering and arises from both householders, businesses and "cowboy"
operators.
Why litter is a problem
— Litter is unsightly, unhealthy and
gives the impression that no one cares for an area. Poor local
environments often suffer from wider social issues such as anti-social
behaviour, drug misuse and lack of commercial investment. — Poor
local environments are a significant depressor of people's quality
of life, being the highest ranked factor outside immediate family
wellbeing.
— The litter problem is not getting
any better (nor, over the past 10 years, much worse) because a
significant minority of people don't seem to have pride or take
ownership for where they live.
— It is costly for owners of land to
clean up.
Facts and Figures
— In 2006 the overall level of litter
dropped for the first time in five years. This does not give cause
for complacency, however, as the improvement is minor and does
not yet indicate a general trend. The standard could easily fall
back again. — It costs council tax payers £547
million a year just to clean the streets of England; there are
additional costs to them for dealing with related problems such
as fly—tipping, graffiti and vandalism. Whilst accurate
figures are hard to come by, we believe the total cost is not
far short of £1 billion.
— This is without the costs to private
landowners and other public bodies.
— In 1963, that bill stood at just
£13 million.
— A quarter of areas we survey are
blighted with fast food rubbish; 25% of people admit to dropping
food rubbish.
— It is illegal to drop litter anywhere,
whether public or private land, under the Environmental Protection
Act 1990 and the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005.
— You can be fined up to £80 on
the spot for dropping litter or if the case is taken to the magistrate's
court fined a maximum of £2500 by the court.
— Under the Clean Neighbourhoods and
Environment Act 2005 (section 19) local authorities can set the
level of their fines for dropping litter. Where no amount has
been specified by the authority the fixed penalty shall be £75.
— Last year there were 45,000 litter
prosecutions.
— Discarded food litter attracts rats
and is contributing to an increase in the rat population (Source:
British Pest Control Association 2002).
— Cigarettes and gum always were classed
as litter but are now officially so, with certain ambiguities
having been removed by section 27 of the Clean Neighbourhoods
and Environment Act 2005.
— Smoking related litter is the most
prevalent form of litter. Our surveys show that it has doubled
since the smoking ban was introduced in July 2007.
— Throwing litter out of the car window
is Britain's biggest driving annoyance—with over 90% of
road users finding it irritating (2003). We are planning a campaign
focused on this problem next summer.
HOW CAN
THE LITTER
PROBLEM BE
IMPROVED?
Communities
ENCAMS Big Tidy Up, launched 1 September 2008,
is the biggest ever nationwide clean-up and has attracted a massive
response. This indicates to me that:
(a) Given the right encouragement and support
people will do something to help themselves on this issue. (b)
Keep Britain Tidy has to go "back to its roots" and
really focus on its fundamental core purpose of making the country
cleaner and a more pleasant place. This will require education
and the re-establishment of a national awareness campaign in order
to alter people's values and behaviours.
(c) That we can achieve a critical mass of people
willing to do something, we can turn the tide and make the litterers
a tiny minority—there will always be some, but they should
be minority who know that what they're doing is unacceptable.
We must also make it easier for individuals,
householders and small businesses to "do the right thing"
by making it simple, clear and consistant about how to handle
and recycle materials and how to dispose of items appropriately.
Volunteering
There are many examples of clean-up projects
which "adopt" an area, park, or beach. They are very
widespread in, for example, North America and Australia. We have
and do run some successful regional initiatives including Rivercare,
in partnership with Anglian Water, where volunteers adopt and
maintain stretches of local waterways. However, ENCAMS has never
centrally run such a scheme in England, concluding that the difficulties
of doing so preclude it as a solution. Volunteer action is becoming
more widespread, encouraged by government initiatives and funding,
we wish to explore the case for a formal network of clean-up groups.
Unpaid Work (Community Sentencing)
Community sentences can include a "punishment"
element where amends are made to the community (or to victims).
Removing graffiti or cleaning up litter/fly-tipping are ways in
which compulsory unpaid work can be completed. An estimated 20
million hours of unpaid work have been undertaken over the last
four years (Ministry of Justice 2008). This form of unpaid work
in the community is not well understood and only patchily utilised,
although we are aware of some Probation Services undertaking significant
amounts of this work. I would like to see more "joining up"
of areas in need of cleaning-up with this unpaid workforce (alongside
the other elements of Community Sentencing for offenders such
as education, treatment, supervision, behaviour-change and rehabilitation).
WORKING IN
PARTNERSHIP
For the Big Tidy Up, the support we and our
partners provide is a vital component. BTCV, CleanUp UK, Waste
Watch, and CPRE who we are sharing this platform with today, Thames
21 and others like the Women's Institute, and over 200 local authorities
have all contributed greatly to its success.
In future I intend to place much more emphasis on
ENCAMS achieving results through being a partner organisation.
For instance, we should have a stronger "green" element
to our work to encourage better maintenance of landscaping, use
of parks, green open spaces and improved access to, and cleanliness
of, the countryside. This would be best achieved by partnering
those organisations who are already experts on managing green
space, horticulture and landscaping.
LAND MANAGERS—LOCAL
AUTHORITIES
Local authorities have the main responsibility
for keeping our public places litter free. The powers of local
authorities to take enforcement action have been considerably
extended. In many areas, the standard of management of cleansing
and street scene services has much improved in recent years. We
welcome the inclusion of National Indicator 195 in the set for
Local Area Agreements and also the fact that 72 areas have adopted
this indicator this year.
But there is still much to be done and one of the
main challenges facing local authorities is keeping costs down
whilst maintaining a satisfactory cleanliness standard.
Other land managers
However, the public do not distinguish between
"public" and "private" land and if private
land is fly-tipped or litter strewn it makes the whole area look
uncared for.
A key challenge is what help can be given to private
landowners who do not have the means or the interest to clean
up their land.
There are also public or public/private sector
landowners who need to be held responsible. These include, to
name just a few, The Highways Agency, Railtrack and Registered
Social Landlords.
CONCLUSION
Perceptions about the quality of our public
spaces—whether they are clean, safe, green and attractive—are
crucial to whether people are satisfied with their local area.
There's no room for complacency on litter but nor
is it all doom and gloom either. As mentioned previously, the
national litter survey shows a fairly steady picture overall of
no dramatic worsening in litter but no great improvement either
(this is, of course, a generalisation because there are pockets
where things are very unsatisfactory indeed). But I want to use
that levelling off as a starting point from which to launch a
brand new era of litter reduction, efficient collection, excellent
services and management and, most challenging of all, public commitment.
Phil Barton
Chief Executive
ENCAMS, the national charity responsible for the
Keep Britain Tidy Campaign
September 2008
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