Forum Topic

There are several different aspects to this.It IS terrible the way in which people seem to picnic nowadays and then just get up and walk away from all the mess THEY have made - and this can be in a park or at the seaside. We do now have packaging regulations to restrict the amount of packaging on our goods and we also have kerbside collections for recycling which we didn't in the past.  I can remember taking a bag of plastic to Stirling Road every so often - and the frustration of all those different sized and shaped rigid food containers and trying to stack/squash/flatten/squeeze them into a smaller volume of space. The cauliflower in its own personal globe which was the irritation too far for me is pictured here as it appeared in a newspaper article at the same time:http://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/nov/14/supermarkets.ethicalliving Cauli flowers are protected by their leaves - a lot of which I like to eat - and if you don't buy them from a greengrocer without any plastic they will nowadays come in an open plastic bag.  I still don't really see the need for this but it doesn't cause the volume problem that those plastic globes did!I don't think it is just that some people are incredibly lazy but that a lot of people are and we have become  victims of marketing.  We don't need a lot of which we buy.  If we couldn't buy on credit we wouldn't buy as much. Wecould then be healthier if we didn't eat as much.  Sadly we often seem to value food on the quantity rather than the quality.  We also seem to think that the only function of the Council is to clean up after us.  What happened to the posters telling us to take our litter home?  Telling us not to drop litter?  Why do we think it is acceptable to trash our own back yard?

Philippa Bond ● 4243d

LB Hounslow have powers under the following legislation to deal with flytipping on private land:Sections 92A-C, including 94A Environmental Protection Act 1990This gives give Local Authorities the power to issue a litter clearing notice which requires occupiers or land owners to keep their property clear of litter and refuse. Land must be restored within a minimum of 28 days to a standard specified by the local authority under the terms of the notice.It may also specify requirements to prevent the land from becoming defaced again. Failure to comply with a notice is an offence – the local authority can clean up the land and recharge the costs, and the offender could face a fine of up to level 4 on the standard scale or £2,500. Section 59 Environmental Protection Act 1990Provides powers for waste regulation authorities and waste collection authorities to require the removal of waste unlawfully and knowingly deposited. If the occupier or owner fails to comply the authority can enter the land,remove the waste and recover the costs from the occupier. Part III (Statutory Nuisance) Environmental Protection Act 1990District councils can serve an abatement notice if an accumulation or deposit is considered to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance. Reasonable costs can be recovered. Inert material, however, would not be categorised asa statutory nuisance. Section 215 Town and Country Planning Act 1990                                      Allows an authority to serve a notice on the owners and occupiers of land, requiring the site to be tidied up if the condition of any land is in such a state as to adversely affect the amenity of the neighbourhood. Section 22 (3) Control of Pollution Act 1974Provides a power to district councils to arrange, with the agreement of the person owning or occupying the land, forthe cleaning of land in the open air (other than a highway) to which the public has access. Charges will be paid by theowner or occupier. Section 78 Public Health Act 1936Provides powers for district councils to sweep and cleanseany court, yard or passage which is used in common by the occupants of two or more buildings (but is not a highway repairable by the inhabitants at large) and which is notregularly swept and kept clean to the satisfaction of the authority. The council may recover reasonable expenses from the occupiers of the buildings.

Jim Linwood ● 4246d