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Anyone would have thought that litter bins had not been invented by the mid 1980s in my neck of the woods; coming home from school, especially close to a corner shop (which wasn't exactly on a corner but never mind), I used to see so much litter on the pavement, (avoiding the, shall we say, the "pooper scooper" stuff that gets left there), including Mr Freeze ice pole plastic wrappers seem to just be thrown on the ground after use, just like Mojo sweet wrappers. This flurry of rubbish seem to obviously come to its peak close to where shops are, giving the public an unofficial indication as to what the shop sells without the shop even promoting it In fact, there had been times that the local pavements were great unofficial advertising for various food products; seeing a Mars Bar wrapper that someone had left on the ground made me want to have a Mars Bar myself; coming home from school where I had worked, I had played, and I was going home for a bit of a rest. As for the litter, we got an omnibus edition when it came to windy weather; notably the October 1987 and Burns Night 1990 storms, with the odd slate off the local rooves as a bonus. So much litter flew about all over the place amongst leaves and everything else. How can one indeed get nostalgic about litter blowing about in a storm, not to mention untidiness?
The Keep Britain Tidy campaign was well underway during the course of the 1980s, reminding us that those oversized buckets outside shops and in the middle of the street was specially for Walkers Crisps packets once the consumer had finished its edible contents and needed somewhere to put the remaining packaging. Even in the early 1970s a lot of long-haired tight t-shirted students with Keep Britain Tidy slogans on their fronts, more down to earth superheroes, almost giving The Goodies (and especially Bill Oddie) a run for their money, and our litter picking heroes were singing in a sub-New Seekers way about the Earth being finished by the year 2000, and behaving near a river in a sub-Green Party way. I have always assumed that this was why The Wombles were originally created - to teach youngsters and adults about the dangers of throwing empty packets and cartons on the ground after using them, as well as giving Elizabeth Beresford and not to mention the late Bernard Cribbins jobs. It had become the Tidy Britain Group by the early 1990s, and I was pleased that World Womble Day actually happened on my 12th birthday back in 1990 - it seemed to be a one-off and not an annual thing which I would have expected; something that might have been on the 30th August or the final Thursday in August each year.
Recently, I was pleased to see that the local council had extra litter bins close to a green area where people are indeed most likely to have a snack as they walk along it; there was a litter bin close to the area but it was very difficult to get to in order to dispose rubbish into. Bottled drinks like Fanta and Pepsi for example; one drinks it and it is detachable in two parts: the bottle and the top; the bottle can be recycled but the top cannot. It does remind me of the drinks cans that had a detachable ring pulls which I used to see around the footpaths of the Nottingham Arboretum on summer Sunday afternoons in the 1980s, mostly around the green park benches where people have had a drink from a can; the can goes into the neighbouring litter bin, but the ring pull doesn't quite make it for some reason, hence it seemed to have fallen on the ground instead - and then the drinks manufacturers made the cans in such a way so that the ring pulls cannot be detached as in a way of reducing littering, but one can still use the whole thing as litter after it had been used. That's Life! dealt with this at one point in the early 1990s - that was the one that they found an old pair of Y-fronts when they were surveying the litter, but they did find a empty can of deodorant as well. And if public litter bins being full up as being an excuse of not putting things into it, I know that it did remind me of an episode of Super Gran from the mid 1980s with one of the characters being stuck inside a Keep Britain Tidy logo bin with their legs sticking out - not Super Gran herself of course.
"Every time my son borrows the car, he comes back stinking like a filthy ashtray", so went the Jeremy Beadle voiceover-alike in an early 1990s Keep Britain Tidy PIF (I know that it wasn't Jeremy Beadle but another actor whose name escapes me as I am writing this) - the one that ends with "everyone's got an excuse - what's yours?" A variation of this also showed a child rattling railings with a stick; on the corner was a glass bottle; the child knocked the glass bottle to the ground, it smashed, and the child screamed for she was cut by the shards of glass, and her mother had to attend to her. Meanwhile, cue the horrible man who had just got onto a bus looking on, knowing that it was him that caused the accident in the first place for it was he that but the glass bottle on the wall in the first place. "Bag it and bin it, it just takes a minute", when the Tom Baker-voiced PIF; cue a ballet dancer and even a dog using the same bin. "Don't put it out - put it in", the former Doctor Who actor advised us all. A mid 1970s PIFs with the dulcet tones of Sir Harry Secombe (what was indeed the relevance to that?) made it on to the late 1990s Charley Live video - or ir could have been Charley Says as it looked animated. And they were always (in the Central ITV region at least) had the final slot in the ad break.
What is even more annoying is when car passengers throw cigarette packets out of the window when the vehicle is on the move. I can even remember a double decker school bus full of kids, and one of them had thrown an empty crisp packet from out of an upstairs window; their school should have taken action against them if they knew by giving them an after-school detention so that they were not able to get that same bus. I was a pedestrian at the time, walking up the road and saw the bus in question stop before a junction where the offending incident took place. The crisp packet landed on the road, and it could have obstructed the driver of the car behind. I am a bit surprised that schools made pupils do litter picking as a punishment considering the fact that there was something positive to gain from it by helping the environment; more like community service rather than a concrete punishment. Crisps might not be too healthy what with all that salt and fat, but when it comes to healthy eating (which might be good for the consumer), but it isn't very healthy from a litter perspective either, and it doesn't make much difference either; apple cores are also litter after the apple has been eaten - in fact, someone had got accused of throwing an apple core a few years ago by a Police Community Support Officer and has ended up in a police cell for around 12 hours. As for banana skins, I don't need to mention the consequences of them being left on the pavement either as it is too obvious. As for buses themselves, they can almost be seen as mobile litter bins; as well as the used tickets on passenger seats (why didn't they take them with them when they left the bus - perhaps we should classify them as being lost property as they have left them behind?), it is a main reason why eating and drinking is not allowed on buses, mostly because of the litter that it leaves behind, and ironically enough, some passengers use the "used bus tickets" bin to dispose of their litter - not good. It is just as bad as graffiti and criminal damage.
Liza Tarbuck (Tarby's daughter, or "Pamela Wilson" as I like to affectionally call her after "Watching" her on the TV) could have chosen spiders, Birkenhead, or expensive hotels as candidates for Room 101, but instead she chose to put the theme of litter when she was Paul Merton's guest in 2001 (the same series as the Anne Robinson "Welsh" controversy). Ms Tarbuck commented that there isn't anything more horrible than a plastic bag stuck in a tree, and it was one of those "independent pound shop" ones as well. Ribbons of old cassette tape being found in the hard shoulders of motorway and main roads, presumably thrown there by some annoyed driver whose car stereo tape deck has chewed up their favourite country and western audiotape album, and so the owner has thrown it out of the window in disgust (not the first time someone has done that...) The Room 101 conversation not surprisingly moved onto the Wombles: "who was your favourite Womble?" Tarbuck asked. Merton chose Madame Cholet while Tarbuck wouldn't mind a bit of Wombling around with Orinoco. It went into Room 101 in the end: "I'll put this in my litter bin", Merton said. I wonder whether her father Jimmy Tarbuck would have been so much litter conscious when winner obviously takes all? I am not saying that his act was rubbish, mind - I really respect him!
I would advise any littler droppers to literally pack it in or "packet in", as in "packet in the bin" as soon as you see one to put it in. Keep Britain Tidy and do your bit.
The Keep Britain Tidy campaign was well underway during the course of the 1980s, reminding us that those oversized buckets outside shops and in the middle of the street was specially for Walkers Crisps packets once the consumer had finished its edible contents and needed somewhere to put the remaining packaging. Even in the early 1970s a lot of long-haired tight t-shirted students with Keep Britain Tidy slogans on their fronts, more down to earth superheroes, almost giving The Goodies (and especially Bill Oddie) a run for their money, and our litter picking heroes were singing in a sub-New Seekers way about the Earth being finished by the year 2000, and behaving near a river in a sub-Green Party way. I have always assumed that this was why The Wombles were originally created - to teach youngsters and adults about the dangers of throwing empty packets and cartons on the ground after using them, as well as giving Elizabeth Beresford and not to mention the late Bernard Cribbins jobs. It had become the Tidy Britain Group by the early 1990s, and I was pleased that World Womble Day actually happened on my 12th birthday back in 1990 - it seemed to be a one-off and not an annual thing which I would have expected; something that might have been on the 30th August or the final Thursday in August each year.
Recently, I was pleased to see that the local council had extra litter bins close to a green area where people are indeed most likely to have a snack as they walk along it; there was a litter bin close to the area but it was very difficult to get to in order to dispose rubbish into. Bottled drinks like Fanta and Pepsi for example; one drinks it and it is detachable in two parts: the bottle and the top; the bottle can be recycled but the top cannot. It does remind me of the drinks cans that had a detachable ring pulls which I used to see around the footpaths of the Nottingham Arboretum on summer Sunday afternoons in the 1980s, mostly around the green park benches where people have had a drink from a can; the can goes into the neighbouring litter bin, but the ring pull doesn't quite make it for some reason, hence it seemed to have fallen on the ground instead - and then the drinks manufacturers made the cans in such a way so that the ring pulls cannot be detached as in a way of reducing littering, but one can still use the whole thing as litter after it had been used. That's Life! dealt with this at one point in the early 1990s - that was the one that they found an old pair of Y-fronts when they were surveying the litter, but they did find a empty can of deodorant as well. And if public litter bins being full up as being an excuse of not putting things into it, I know that it did remind me of an episode of Super Gran from the mid 1980s with one of the characters being stuck inside a Keep Britain Tidy logo bin with their legs sticking out - not Super Gran herself of course.
"Every time my son borrows the car, he comes back stinking like a filthy ashtray", so went the Jeremy Beadle voiceover-alike in an early 1990s Keep Britain Tidy PIF (I know that it wasn't Jeremy Beadle but another actor whose name escapes me as I am writing this) - the one that ends with "everyone's got an excuse - what's yours?" A variation of this also showed a child rattling railings with a stick; on the corner was a glass bottle; the child knocked the glass bottle to the ground, it smashed, and the child screamed for she was cut by the shards of glass, and her mother had to attend to her. Meanwhile, cue the horrible man who had just got onto a bus looking on, knowing that it was him that caused the accident in the first place for it was he that but the glass bottle on the wall in the first place. "Bag it and bin it, it just takes a minute", when the Tom Baker-voiced PIF; cue a ballet dancer and even a dog using the same bin. "Don't put it out - put it in", the former Doctor Who actor advised us all. A mid 1970s PIFs with the dulcet tones of Sir Harry Secombe (what was indeed the relevance to that?) made it on to the late 1990s Charley Live video - or ir could have been Charley Says as it looked animated. And they were always (in the Central ITV region at least) had the final slot in the ad break.
What is even more annoying is when car passengers throw cigarette packets out of the window when the vehicle is on the move. I can even remember a double decker school bus full of kids, and one of them had thrown an empty crisp packet from out of an upstairs window; their school should have taken action against them if they knew by giving them an after-school detention so that they were not able to get that same bus. I was a pedestrian at the time, walking up the road and saw the bus in question stop before a junction where the offending incident took place. The crisp packet landed on the road, and it could have obstructed the driver of the car behind. I am a bit surprised that schools made pupils do litter picking as a punishment considering the fact that there was something positive to gain from it by helping the environment; more like community service rather than a concrete punishment. Crisps might not be too healthy what with all that salt and fat, but when it comes to healthy eating (which might be good for the consumer), but it isn't very healthy from a litter perspective either, and it doesn't make much difference either; apple cores are also litter after the apple has been eaten - in fact, someone had got accused of throwing an apple core a few years ago by a Police Community Support Officer and has ended up in a police cell for around 12 hours. As for banana skins, I don't need to mention the consequences of them being left on the pavement either as it is too obvious. As for buses themselves, they can almost be seen as mobile litter bins; as well as the used tickets on passenger seats (why didn't they take them with them when they left the bus - perhaps we should classify them as being lost property as they have left them behind?), it is a main reason why eating and drinking is not allowed on buses, mostly because of the litter that it leaves behind, and ironically enough, some passengers use the "used bus tickets" bin to dispose of their litter - not good. It is just as bad as graffiti and criminal damage.
Liza Tarbuck (Tarby's daughter, or "Pamela Wilson" as I like to affectionally call her after "Watching" her on the TV) could have chosen spiders, Birkenhead, or expensive hotels as candidates for Room 101, but instead she chose to put the theme of litter when she was Paul Merton's guest in 2001 (the same series as the Anne Robinson "Welsh" controversy). Ms Tarbuck commented that there isn't anything more horrible than a plastic bag stuck in a tree, and it was one of those "independent pound shop" ones as well. Ribbons of old cassette tape being found in the hard shoulders of motorway and main roads, presumably thrown there by some annoyed driver whose car stereo tape deck has chewed up their favourite country and western audiotape album, and so the owner has thrown it out of the window in disgust (not the first time someone has done that...) The Room 101 conversation not surprisingly moved onto the Wombles: "who was your favourite Womble?" Tarbuck asked. Merton chose Madame Cholet while Tarbuck wouldn't mind a bit of Wombling around with Orinoco. It went into Room 101 in the end: "I'll put this in my litter bin", Merton said. I wonder whether her father Jimmy Tarbuck would have been so much litter conscious when winner obviously takes all? I am not saying that his act was rubbish, mind - I really respect him!
I would advise any littler droppers to literally pack it in or "packet in", as in "packet in the bin" as soon as you see one to put it in. Keep Britain Tidy and do your bit.