No more rubbish excuses

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Defra, aims to protect nature from the negative impacts of litter with a new campaign across England.

Keep it Bin It is the theme for one of the largest government-led anti-littering campaigns to date. Working with the charity Keep Britain Tidy, the focus is on the damage done to nature through litter and features images of wildlife eating and getting tangled in litter, contrasted with typical excuses given by people for dropping litter with the punchline – NO MORE RUBBISH EXCUSES.

At launch Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, said, ’The ‘Keep it, Bin it’ campaign is a bold statement of our intent to tackle the scourge of littering. Littering is antisocial and unacceptable. It plagues our environment and poisons our wildlife.’

The RSPCA, for example responds to 1,500 calls about litter-related incidents affecting animals every year. Then there is the huge cost, almost £700 million last year, of keeping clean streets across England, much of which was spent cleaning up avoidable litter. The campaign aims to persuade people to put litter in a bin or keep it until they’re able to bin it.

The campaign is supported by commercial partners. Mars Wrigley Confectionery is one of the first commercial partners to join along with Greggs, McDonalds, PepsiCo UK and Network Rail.

The government aims to make littering culturally unacceptable within a generation, with an initial focus on 16 to 24 year olds as evidence suggests that this age group is more likely to drop litter.