As I said to Shirley, I remember as a kid actually being encouraged by my parents to just chuck stuff out the window on long trips, and they were even then quite environmentally minded! But there was a swift turn around in attitudes due to some pretty good campaigning in Australia in the 80’s.

In the UK Figures received from Green Flag breakdown services have revealed the
top five items thrown from cars + Baglady [BL] QUESTIONS

* CIGARETTE BUTTS (29 MILLION)

BL: why’s that not OK? CBs are made of —- which does/does not break down into the environment.[send us your answers]

* FOOD (17.4 MILLION items including fast foods)

BL: What sort of foods are OK to throw out the car window?

* FOOD WRAPPERS (11.8 MILLION)

BL: which is worse: paper or plastic wrappers? why?

* Drink bottles and cans (6.2 million)

BL: what should you do with:

1] drink bottles, plastic or glass?

2] cans? Who’s doing good things here: Adelaide, South Australia…. Irn Bru, Scotland…. who else? come on world….

* TISSUES (5.2 MILLION)

BL: Why do you think BL suspects that a lot more than 5.2 million tissues were tossed?

The research also showed that

* 11 million pieces of fruit and 4.5 million sweet wrappers were hurled from car windows

Reasons given for tossing

27% ‘to prevent a smell building up‘

17% ‘couldn’t wait to get to a litter bin’

16% did not stop to bin because ‘the road was too busy‘

1 in 5 toss rubbish ‘to prevent the car becoming cluttered’

Hmm, there’s one thing Baglady has to say about this…DON’T THROW ANYTHING AWAY THERE IS NO AWAY! Wonder how this compares to stats in OZ. We know that there is still plenty of rubbish thrown from cars but it is a pretty taboo thing to do these days here. And there are hefty fines. Also people in Oz would travel huge distances by car compared to NI.

And from Australia :
Firstly we have a system that allows people to report the registration of a car that they have seen litter being thrown out of: http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/warr/littervehicles.htm as you can see the fine for an individual is $200 and $400 for corporations, irrespective of the type of litter deposited.

While it is still a massive problem, tossing rubbish out of the car window is really frowned upon in Australia. As I said to Shirley, I remember as a kid actually being encouraged by my parents to just chuck stuff out the window on long trips, and they were even then quite environmentally minded! But there was a swift turn around in attitudes due to some pretty good campaigning over here in the 80’s.

But despite this, still, In 2008-09, M2 maintenance crews collected an estimated 40 tonnes of waste resulting from motorist litter and lost loads on the motorway, and the M2 is only 21 kms long!