At the end of last year the local borough council of Wandsworth announced a plan for a new anti-litter policy that is going to both improve the efficiency of junk collection and management on the territory of the borough and save the tax payers quite a bit of money.
In the current state of affairs, residents of Wandsworth pay up to 3.8 million GBP per year from tax money for junk collection. If the new policy is accepted and takes the desired effects, those expenses can be cut nearly in half!
The plan is simple. The first thing to do according to it is for the council to buy a fleet of new, cutting edge vehicles to collect the junk by sweeping and “hoover” over it. The next thing on the list is for the council to take drastic measures against individuals who are littering the borough, as well as local shops and other businesses that in recent years often prefer to save some money from waste collection by simply dumping the junk produced by their respective operations directly on the highway.
On top of everything, local officials are going to commence a public awareness campaign which is going to explain why the measures taken are important. Wandsworth has the reputation of being among the cleanest places in London at the present moment, and the authorities are motivated to make sure this remains so. Just in 2014 over 800 people were charged with breaching environmental protection laws. Some of them were caught dropping litter directly on the streets, and others were in more serious violation of the law. On average, everyone charged was to pay nearly 400 GBP in fines. Even today the council is carrying out regular checks on commercial sites in order to make sure that the law is followed. The latest developments show that the control will become even tighter, which is good news for everyone. Even business owners who are going to be affected by those stricter checks agree that if you follow the rules, you should not have problems and it is all done for the greater good of the community.
According to the most recent statistics London is far from being the cleanest capital in Europe. Even though it appears on top places in every list, Northern European cities still remain much cleaner – not only because of the fact that fewer people live there, but also due to much greater public consciousness about the issue, and the dedication of every single citizen to better waste management, proper waste disposal and recycling. We can only be glad that the local administration in Wandsworth shows initiative on such a problematic question and is prepared to work hard for improving the conditions in which waste management is handled in the borough. This brings hope that more and more local councils in London are going to be led by this example, and the city will become a much cleaner place in the future.