500 signatures reached
To: Rt Hon George Eustice MP
Campaign to stop littering - Keep Britain Tidy 2021!
Create a high profile national campaign to educate all parts of society to stop dropping litter: Keep Britain Tidy for the 21st Century! This needs to start in schools, be on posters, in the news, in the press and on social media. The only way to halt the growth in litter across the UK is to make it unacceptable for anyone to drop litter or throw it out of their vehicle.
Why is this important?
Over the last year, I have become more and more aware of the massive growth in the amount of litter everywhere you walk or travel. Over a year ago, I joined up with a group of volunteer litter pickers in our village in Yorkshire, who all want to make a difference to the environment in the community we live in. We meet every couple of weeks and litter pick in pairs in the village and up to the roundabout and slip roads off the A1. Over the year the amount we collect has increased and increased and we can now collect 40 bags in a week. Not only is the litter ruining our beautiful countryside, it is also harming our wildlife and endangering our health. Plastics are getting shredded by strimmers and mowers and getting into our waterways, where fish can eat them, eventually turning up on our plates and entering our own bodies. We also know that in 2015 ,90% of seabirds were found to have plastic in their guts ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34108017) in this year it was found that plastic is responsible for the deaths of over 17% albatrosses, a threatened species ( https://phys.org/news/2021-02-plastic-ocean-threatened-albatrosses-thought.html ). We have to stop this insidious creep of litter before its too late!
