Early last year, the East Belfast Green Party constituency group signed up to Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful’s ‘Adopt a Spot’ programme, run in conjunction with EastSide Greenways. Pledging to conduct regular clean-ups, we wanted to take positive action to tackle the litter problem blighting our local environment. After some consideration, we elected to adopt Victoria Park in the Titanic area of East Belfast, partly because it’s always nice to see the water birds there but also because we’d noticed parts in need of a bit of TLC. Having been allocated our litter-pickers, rubbish bags and dashing high-vis vests, we were feeling positive and excited to start.  

Then COVID-19 hit and, of course, larger-scale litter picks were no longer safe. However, rather than putting paid to our plans, the lockdown instilled greater significance to the cause. We were able to organise hour-long trips in household bubbles and as restrictions began to ease, socially distanced meet ups for volunteers. Not only did this help keep our constituency group connected and focused but we also discovered a genuine sense of joy in picking up old bits of rubbish!

For members, litter-picking ticked a lot of boxes – providing physical exercise in the fresh air, mental benefits of socialising and spending time in green spaces, and the satisfaction of accomplishing something productive, contributing to cleaner and more pleasant surroundings. Not to mention the fun of making up stories behind some of the more ‘interesting’ finds… Cigarette butts are the most common litter item in Northern Ireland, but we’ve also lifted a pile consisting of a life vest, a nun ornament and several vodka bottles so make of that what you will.

NI’s problem with litter

For all the positivity, the initiative prompted several points of discussion among the group. Since 2012, fewer and fewer NI public areas are meeting good levels of cleanliness. With huge clean-up operations required after bank holiday weekends even in our local beauty spots, have we become immune to the effects of litter? On every litter-pick, members of the public would stop to thank us and offer encouragement. On one occasion we were asked what we’d done to warrant community service. Yet every month, new dog poo bags were found hanging from trees and more rubbish had been left on top of full bins to blow over the park. Was our civic action unintentionally adding to a mentality that ‘‘someone else will deal with it’?

Belfast City Council handed out 528 litter fines over the past 12 months and certainly, more bins and consistent enforcement are required. We also need to develop more effective education on the negative impact of litter to people, plants and wildlife than shouty signage and criminalisation. With annual street clean-up costs of over £12 million, more than almost every other city of a similar size across the UK, surely that money could be better spent elsewhere if people disposed of their rubbish properly.

Encouraging sustainability through webinars

Recently, EastSide Greenways have been running a series of webinars aiming to engage local residents on how sustainability plays out at a neighbourhood level, raising awareness of how everyday behaviour like littering can have long-term social, economic and environmental effects. These education programmes are all the more important given recent research from Keep Britain Tidy indicates that litter prevalence is linked to levels of deprivation in an area, associated with increased poverty, crime and social disorder.

Perceptions of uncared for environments can perpetuate a vicious circle, hampering tourism, investment and public health, leaving those with fewer economic resources to experience even poorer environmental quality. The need to invest in future generations explains why Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful have set up their Eco Schools programme. Instead of stand-alone ‘green’ classes, environmental awareness is embedded across the curriculum and ethos of the school, inspiring environmental stewardship. It’s hoped that positive changes in attitude will filter through to peers and parents and promote a cultural shift among communities, towards encouraging more outdoor recreation with less detriment to the natural environment. 

Business’ role in keeping NI clean

COVID has proved a hard lesson in drumming home the necessity for global citizenship and global solutions to wicked problems. Feeling grossed out bagging the now ubiquitous litter item of disposable masks was a strikingly personal demonstration of how the crises of pandemic and climate breakdown converged. As always, prevention is better than cure; perhaps, just as a worldwide vaccination initiative may be the only viable solution to the pandemic, the litter issue also needs to be addressed at a much higher level, right from the point of production.

A composition report by Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful found that over half of our litter originates from just seven companies. Clearly, litter management needs to include businesses who owe it to the people buying their products to design products that don’t harm the customers’ environment and adequately contribute to cleaning up their own waste. Hope is on the horizon as Northern Ireland’s first climate change bill reaches committee stage at Stormont.

Establishing a legally binding target of net zero for carbon would, for example, add extra impetus for the introduction of a bottle deposit return scheme here, with small financial incentives to recycle already successfully trialled in Whitehead and shown to be highly beneficial in countries like Germany. By the same token, Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging, as an enactment of the ‘polluter pays’ principle, would require producers to meet the costs of collection, clean-up and dealing with their products at ‘end of life’. This would put the onus on them to make reusing or recycling their products easier, preventing litter in the first place.

These collaborative policy ideas have been talked about for years and enjoy strong public support but the climate change bill can reinforce the need for swift and robust action, and aspirational garbage goals.

Sustainability is everyone’s responsibility

East Belfast Green Party will continue our litter picks in Victoria Park – partly for the personal benefits we gain from it but also because we value being active citizens, seeing it as a tangible way of instilling civic pride and improving the immediate environment for everyone in our communities. It’s a grassroots action that starts literally at our own doorsteps. It’s also an effort to encourage re-evaluation of the production of litter at its source and cultivate a culture in which everyone accepts their responsibility to keep NI tidy and more sustainable. Hopefully there’ll come a day when our excursions are no longer necessary; in the meantime, if the bin’s full, take the rubbish home with you.

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