If you have a quick look at you area right now to check out how much litter is around, what would the answer be – so much litter, clean enough or very clean? Green Element charity diaries for December 2020 has measured it and the outcome was predictable but promising.
Michael volunteered for Keep Scotland Beautiful, going as far into the data of litter picking as is possible by completing a couple of litter surveys.
As an environmental consultancy, we are no strangers to data, and we use carefully gathered information all the time in the environment – so why not also when picking litter? Keep Scotland Beautiful agrees – and they provide all the tools needed so you can do this and report back to help inform local and national campaigns and policy.
Clutching my survey form and pencil in frozen December hands, I set about marking off every piece of litter in my 100m x 3m woodland stretch. The survey asks for context, which in this case was that these areas had been cleaned entirely of litter just 1 month prior by yours truly. These were also areas within 100m of a bin which on this occasion had been emptied.
Depressingly, or predictably there was loads of litter again to be found.
But doing these surveys throws up as many questions. Firstly, they need to be repeated and periodically in the same area to see how the litter problem persists – so I plan on repeating this work seasonally. Secondly, the survey format itself shows how predictable this kind of pollution is: Keep Scotland Beautiful has already marked – in minute detail – the categories of litter you may find, so that you can tally off what you do find.
Here you see the usual suspects – As an example – a whole category on fast food where, despite being over two miles away from the nearest outlet, I tallied off three separate branded paper bags of burger waste, one cup and lid, and two straws. How do three beer bottle caps end up mid-way along a path within a month? How do two balloons get there and from what celebration?
As you can see, you do have a lot of time to think while litter picking!