Stop the Drop

Travelling by train to South West Wales, the paper's are full of articles about the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE)'s "Stop the Drop" campaign to stamp out litter and fly-tipping. An example can be found in today's "Western Monrning News" but most of the national broadsheets carried similar articles.

Spearheaded by new CPRE President, Bill Bryson, Stop the Drop aims to solve litter and fly-tipping problems blighting our countryside, cities, towns and villages. Bryson is urging "good citizens", local authorities and landowners to join his personal crusade as the amount of litter dropped in the UK is now five times greater than it was in the 1960s.

Among the many interesting ideas is one that really stands out. The CPRE is to lobby the Government to introduce a nationwide deposit system for drinks containers, whereby households would be given money back for recycling their plastic and glass bottles. To this, I would add drinks cans.

At home, I recycle all these items anyway. However, there is a problem when I'm away from the house - I general throw them away (into a bin, that is). If there were recycling receptacles among the street furniture of towns, I would use them. The problem is that they are often "contaminated" with the wrong type of recyclable material. The deposit scheme would ensure that they ended up in the right place - and you would be "paid" to recycle!

The next problem is who would co-ordinate this scheme...