Rubbish seems to be everywhere you look. As one of the leaders of a community wetlands group in north-west London, I’ve witnessed a cormorant diving into a bobbing flotilla of plastic, shores made up of plastic and a heron starving to death due to red nylon tangled around its beak.
Last month, a new disease caused solely by plastics was discovered in seabirds. And in February, our group, Friends of the Welsh Harp, removed four tonnes of rubbish from a river and the surrounding woodland. Our rivers are not only open sewers, they’re also open dustbins that lead to the sea.
You’d think, based on this, that I’d feel angry at those who litter – that I’d resent them. But I don’t. And I believe you should resist that temptation, too. Let me explain why.
I investigated why people litter as part of a psychoanalytic studies MA, and found that, on an individual level, littering is a kind of revenge on society – it’s a litmus test of how people are feeling. And judging by what I see on a daily basis, many people are feeling alienated, disconnected and excluded. They are angry and are taking it out on the world.
Is that any surprise, when local communities are broken or nonexistent, their deep local knowledge lost and connection to nature severed? In a time of “polycrisis” (climate breakdown, cost of living crisis, assaults on democracy, threats to the NHS), negative feelings about the world and yourself have got to go somewhere. Nature – exposed, unprotected, wild and often neglected – is a perfect place to dump those rubbish feelings, whether that’s doing it physically with litter, or going on a walk to destress.
The impulse to litter comes from a feeling that we cannot really affect the world, negatively or positively – after all, what impact can one individual have compared with a polluting company, let alone a whole polluting country? It comes from a lack of belief in the power of the individual to effect change, which in itself is rooted in feelings of despair and hopelessness. Such feelings are understandable when the scale of the environmental crisis is as staggering as it is now.
When we assume the moral fault lies only with the litterers, we let those creating the systemic problems off the hook. After all, littering exposes our economic model for what it is: profit-driven, unaccountable and amoral. Littering is fuelled by manufacturers that continue to push hard to generate waste for profit. In the 1950s, a speaker at a plastics conference announced to delegates that “your future is in the garbage wagon!” The public were actually taught by these profiteers to throw things away, so they keep making and selling. Fast forward to today, and plastic production is set to triple by 2060. If we really want things to change, if we want our green and blue spaces back, we need real legislative change on plastic packaging.
Yet as local authorities and government agencies become even more cash-strapped, it’s convenient for them to ignore all this and blame the individuals who litter and flytip, then leave the cleanup to volunteer groups like ours. It suits them, too, to minimise the problem: the Canal and River Trust (CRT), which has guardianship of all of Britain’s waterways including the Welsh Harp, played down the plastic pollution crisis by describing it as “unsightly rubbish”. Natural England, the government’s adviser for the environment, supports our litter-picking efforts “to improve the aesthetic” of these areas.
What can be done? Shaming and denouncing litterers’ attitudes does not work. It leads to stubborn refusal and entrenches litterers more deeply in their position, reinforcing their negative behaviours. Rather than a blaming, moralistic attitude towards them, we might do better adopting a more thoughtful and understanding stance. “Hello, how are you?” is a much better starting point than “Don’t be a tosser”. If any anger is justified, it should be directed at profiteering manufacturers and our throwaway culture. We must help people overcome the ecological alienation that ultimately leads them to mistreat their environment. Overcoming this alienation means forming attachments, which means caring.
To be caring, we need to feel cared for. Our local authorities, government and environmental groups need to be open and honest, and show that they understand and care. They should face reality, recognise the staggering scale of issues, and apologise for past neglect. An open, honest society mourns the fact that the earth can’t endlessly give – that it has limitations. It recognises that it must engage in actual, practical care of humans, wildlife and plant life through thoughtful action and collaboration. It must support volunteer groups such as ours that are doing meaningful eco-care work (like many other caring professions, our work is undervalued).
As individuals, when we reconnect with nature and enjoy whatever green and blue spaces we have locally, preferably with others, love soon blossoms. As with human relationships, you soon find yourself caring and even feeling responsible. You find yourself heartbroken when something bad happens. You fight for these places and know you just can’t live without them. And if you can get some bureaucratic organisation to feel the same way, too, I’ll buy you a drink.
