Litter: it's often a different story on the street

The city has just received its best-ever street cleanliness rating. But, as Chris Marshall discovers, there is no easy answer to keeping the Capital's streets clean.

IT was a proud day for the city council as it announced yesterday that it had achieved it highest-ever street cleanliness rating. Everything must have seemed rosy to everyone reading the report from Keep Scotland Beautiful.

Only, outside on at least some city streets, including one not far from the City Chambers, the picture could hardly have been more different.

The litter strewn across the Grassmarket early yesterday was the kind of scene that appalls residents and must put off visitors. So are we really winning the war on litter or are we being overrun?

It is clear from the independent monitoring that the situation has improved in recent years. The council – which spends £10 million a year cleaning up after us and added a further £240,000 to its budget this year – deserves plaudits for that.

It was not so long ago that the Capital came bottom of the pile in Scotland's litter league, but it has started to clean up its act. The results of the monitoring scheme gave Edinburgh a rating of 72 out of 100 – up on the previous score of 68 and reaching the 2010 target two years ahead of schedule. The charity's inspectors make spot checks on six areas spread around the city to come up with their score.

The main innovation by the council – introduced under the previous Labour regime – was introducing litter wardens to help crack down on the problem.

Yet in the past year they handed out only 226 fixed penalty notices – clearly most litter louts still go unpunished. The problem for them is that they have to witness someone throwing rubbish before they can fine them. It is tempting to say we should follow Glasgow and invest in more wardens, but while that might prove a short-term solution in some of the worst hit areas, it is not a panacea for all ills.

Keep Scotland Beautiful points out that nearly half of all those issued with fines across the country are likely to contest them and many wriggle out of paying by providing false names and addresses.

Another issue is of the council's own creation. Again decisions were taken under the last regime, but the continuing use of black bin bags in large parts of the city is perhaps the biggest cause of litter in some areas. There's no stopping those seagulls and foxes that rip them open.

But the difficulty in finding an alternative that is aesthetically acceptable and not prohibitively expensive has proved a hard nut to crack.

Council leader Jenny Dawe says a range of measures have helped improve the appearance of the city's streets. She says: "By managing our operations locally we have concentrated on litter hot spots. In addition, by developing specific programmes to deal with fast food and litter around schools, and improving street sweeping and jet cleaning around refuse containers, we have definitely made our streets more attractive.

"This is not to say that the city is perfectly clean at all times. We are aware of problems in particular areas and are working to address these."

Among the best areas of the city are those to the south, such as Colinton, Gorgie, Fountainbridge and Craiglockhart, while the city centre is the worst.

Donna Niven, of Keep Scotland Beautiful, says progress is being made. She says: "There are four different grades of cleanliness – A, B, C and D. Grade A means absolutely no litter. Grade B will be a small amount of litter, but at a level that's generally acceptable. Grade C is a lot of litter and Grade D is absolutely disgusting and nil point.

"On average, Edinburgh is achieving Grade B. But there are areas that are Grade A and Grade C. A score of 72 is getting there. In the past, Edinburgh has been the worst in Scotland. There are some areas of the city that are certainly better than others but they're all heading in the right direction."

The bottom line remains that too many people are not taking responsibility for themselves. A huge 46 per cent of the Scottish population admits to dropping litter, according to recent research.

Campaigners talk of instilling feelings of civic pride so that littering is simply not tolerated. But it seems wishful thinking to believe people will simply start using bins if we tell them often enough.

That won't stop Francesca Saunders, the Edinburgh founder of People Against Litter (PAL), from doing her bit.

She set up the group in 2003 after becoming increasingly frustrated at the mounting levels of rubbish in the streets around her Bruntsfield home. Encouraging people to pick up one piece of litter every week and convince a friend to do the same, the group now has 500 members spread across the world.

Mrs Saunders said: "I hate litter – it demeans us as a society. Whenever I'm out, I see litter and I pick it up but not every piece I see, or I would be there all day.

"People sometimes look at me in a curious way and I have told people not to drop litter, but the police told me to stop doing that in case somebody hits me."

There's no easy answer to solving Edinburgh's litter problems any faster. In the meantime, maybe we should all take a leaf out of Francesca Saunders's book.