Holy rubbish Batman! My name is Rich Palmer and I am the owner of Dustbox Cleaning Services, based in the UK. Being in the professional cleaning industry, I see so much rubbish and litter. Moreover and particularly litter. So as a result I have put together this infographic – http://www.dustboxcleaning.co.uk/blog//srv/htdocs/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/The-Litter-Crisis-in-Europe-Infographic.jpg called ‘Absolute Rubbish!
It’s because ‘The Litter Crisis in Europe’ is seriously understated. Finally, a couple of quick facts for you:
- The total cost of cleaning up rubbish or litter throughout Europe is estimated at €10 to 13 billion per year.
- Cleaning up Europe’s towns and countryside costs an average of €25 per person. Consequently that’s per year.
- As well,,road litter clean-up costs taxpayers €1 billion per year. I mean all throughout Europe.
- 4 in 5 pieces of marine litter in Europe comes from land.
In conclusion and as I’ve written before, that cleaning up by recycling programs are also around the world. Yet only a few countries have really cleaned up their acts. That means their recycling rate increased. That’s for example Switzerland and Austria. For their recycling rate is around 50% of their waste.
However, many countries have a lot of room for improvement. For example, Romania. They send about 99% of their waste to landfills. And also just 5% of the world’s population produces about 40% of the total waste
A great infographic Richard but the litter prevention initiatives you list are actually all about picking up litter rather than preventing it from happening.
We list 10 things an individual can do to help eliminate littering and picking up litter is the last on that list as, though that’s not what we’re about, we recognise that existing and ongoing litter needs cleared as part of the endeavour.
Beyond that there are many initiatives that those in a position to do something about the problem could undertake but seem either unwilling or incapable of doing so.
The recent Communities and Local Government Committee report:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmcomloc/607/607.pdf
went a little way in the right direction but their suggestions have yet to be implemented.
We wait with interest to see whether Clean Europe Network will bring about the necessary changes or merely act as another layer of expense and bureaucracy between the politicians and the frontline of the battle against the bugs.