Every day I walk from my house in Hyde Road to Riddlesdown station and back along Lower Barn Road and I am horrified by the amount of litter on the path and the grass verge. At the weekends (and in the evenings in the summer when it is light) I regularly pick up one or two carrier bags full of cans, plastic bottles, crisp packets, sweet wrappers, cigarette packets etc. I know school children tend to get the blame for much of this, and there is a great deal of sweet papers, Fruit Shoots etc, but there is quite a lot of adult-generated litter (beer cans, coffee cups, cigarette packets). The really shocking thing is that much of this can be recycled and also there are quite a few litter bins, at both newsagents, bus stops etc, so there really is no excuse.

While I agree that it should not be necessary to do so, it does surprise me that the residents of Lower Barn Road don’t take a greater pride in their locality and pick up the rubbish outside their houses themselves, rather than me having to do it. It is not a particularly nice task, but in my experience litter encourages litter and the more on the ground the more will join it.

If everyone in Riddlesdown took responsibility for the pavement outside their own house the litter problem would be much reduced.  Parents must teach their children to use litter bins, and all adults should role model good behaviour by putting litter in the  bin or recycling box every time. I may look slightly eccentric picking up litter as I walk along, but in my view if I encourage one other person to pick up litter, or even just think twice about dropping it, then it is well worth my effort.

I wonder if your readers agree with me?

Your comments are very interesting, my husband and I work in several of the gardens along Lower Barn Road and always take an extra carrier bag with us because we know that there will be a lot of litter to pick up. We recycle this seperately when we take the "green gear" to the dump. Like you say, if everyone picked up a carrier bag full, we could keep the place tidy,however, for some of the "older" folk that live along that road it is an impossible task.

I suggest you e-mail the head at the school; I think he has made an effort since he took over to improve things and for a while it did so.However, I e-mailed him today because the situation has got really bad again. I said that I feel the school should employ contractors on a regular basis out of their budget to rectify the damage they are causing to the area. That said,it would only take a little effort from more householders to improve the situation greatly.