Why do people do it?

Fly tip and drop litter that is! Today, we find an empty gas bottle and other debris at the entrance to Cow Lane. This is depite the warning notice displayed on the lampost nearby. Walking around a few streets in Grove at the weekend it is all too easy to fill rubbish sacks with litter in a short time. At a time when council spending and cuts are in the news, it is a great shame that extra money or time has to be spent dealing with clearing up after the thoughtless actions of others. According to Keep Britain Tidy, 2.25 million items of litter are dropped every day in the UK with £858 million being spent by local authorities on street cleaning in 2008-2009.

However, it always good to see the community spirit in action. On 4-5 March there will be the OxClean Spring Clean event organised by Oxford Civic Society, which will give the area around Oxford a good Spring Clean. There is also the Big Tidy Up, which aims to collect 500,000 bags of rubbish as part of a national campaign and, of course, we have local litter pickers in Grove. The simple message though is surely Don't Drop It in the first place.