ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO LITTERING AND DOG FOULING
ENFORCEMENT AND EDUCATION
Appendix B
Alternative approaches to reduce littering and dog fouling
1. Duty of Care / Control of Litter
Environmental Health Officers, Trading Standards Officers and Licensing
Officers can work with high street retailers to promote improved facilities for
their customers to reduce littering. This can include the provision of additional
litter bins, signage within stores, clean-ups at the end of the business day,
and measures to reduce the quantity of packaging produced. One advantage
of this approach is that these staff already visit many hundreds of retailers
each year for other reasons (e.g. food safety audits), and hence can include
the anti-litter promotional work alongside these visits. In addition there may
be some merit in trialling the reintroduction of the Pride in Poole Award for
high street businesses, which previously aimed at acknowledging businesses
that took measures to reduce the impact of their activities on their immediate
environment.
2. Additional Waste Bins / Free Dog Waste Bag Disposal Points
Provision of additional waste bins, together with dog waste bag disposal
points at areas where littering and dog fouling is known to be an issue might
result in a reduction in littering. However, there are cost implications in
providing the bins (current budget for bin replacements is just £4k), together
with on-going emptying / maintenance, which needs to be viewed in light of
the MTFP savings required from the Street Scene budgets. This proposal is
presently unfunded and would require additional resource.
3. BoP Staff ‘Litter Squads’ to Issue Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs)
Most FPNs are issued for littering by drivers of cars, as it is possible to obtain
home addresses from the DVLA. It is far more difficult however to obtain a
home address from a person observed to be littering in open spaces and
streets, and staff would probably need to operate in pairs if they are to safely
attempt to secure home addresses for the purpose of serving FPNs. As
outlined in Appendix A, staff from various units who are authorised to carry
out this function do so as a small part of a wider job role. In previous years
staff would often operated covertly, but this type of activity is no longer
permitted and hence would now require hi-visibility patrols. These staff will
inevitably need to relinquish other activities in order to participate in litter
squads. Accordingly decisions will need to be made regarding resource
priorities, including identifying those services that will be impacted in order to
release staff to participate in littering squads.
4. Advertising / Promotional Campaigns
A favoured method adopted by Keep Britain Tidy, we could compliment the
community engagement acitvities with advertising and promotional campaigns
throughout the borough. It would be possible to target campaigns by locality,
or by sections of the population, such as smokers. We could also work with
schools and colleges in order to educate people at an earlier age. Some more
radical approaches could include the provision of transparant receptacles in
public areas which could be filled with the litter collected on that day, and the
cessation of street cleansing for a day in areas of high littering; such
approaches would throw a spotlight on the amount of littering that occurs
within any one day. Clearly there are costs implications with some of these
proposals.
5. Community Participation / Volunteering
Building upon the localism agenda, we could encourage further participation
of community groups and individuals in volunteering to cleanse public areas
that are currently cleansed by Street Scene services. This could even extend
to cleansing the areas immediately beyond the curtilage of houses within
residential streets. Whilst being a challenge to some residents’ expectations
of cleansing policy, such initiatives have the potential to secure considerable
savings to Street Scene budgets.