Research by Keep Britain Tidy shows that young people are most likely to drop litter, despite – or rather because of – their strong sense of personal hygiene. One reason they often cite for not using public dustbins is that they are afraid of going near germs. But the alternative – pocketing their own litter and taking it home – is equally abhorrent to them. Think of the crumbs!
Besides, they have been brought up to believe that the magic fairies from the council will tidy up after them. And so they do: at an annual cost to the taxpayer of £1 billion in England alone. That is enough money to pay for 4,400 libraries, or 33,200 nurses.
I live near London Fields, a small park in east London which fills up with hipsters every time the sun comes out. It's a lovely, festive sight – peroxide waifs with flowers in their hair and gangly public schoolboys disguised as Nordic fishermen, drinking beer, cooking sausages on tinfoil barbecues or passing round boxes of take-away pizza.
And then the sun goes down, and the hipsters stand up and walk away, abandoning their rubbish as insouciantly as a snake shedding its old skin. They don't even seem to recognise their own consumer goods as belonging to them. Once the contents have been dispatched, the packaging is someone else's problem.
Every morning, as I walk through the park to work, I see the council's litter fairies at work: dozens of men in green uniforms, heads bowed, moving across the grass with their clawed sticks like a forensic team searching for clues. And they are, in fact, at the scene of a crime – a moral, as well as legal, one.
The young, with their natural concern for social justice, should be outraged by the politics of litter. Every discarded coffee cup, every blob of chewing gum spat on to the ground, means less money to spend on welfare, education or health. It is the politics of pure, nihilistic individualism, with no regard for the common good. The young will inherit the earth; it's about time they learnt to look after it properly.
Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/564649/s/38b50bf0/sc/10/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cearth0Cenvironment0C10A7273580CKeep0EBritain0Etidy0Eis0Elost0Eon0Etodays0Eselfish0Ehipsters0Bhtml/story01.htm