A wild verge on Nevill Road. Image credit: Imogen Makepeace

 

An update from Milly Manley, Litter Free Lewes and Lewes District Councillor

 

What’s the issue?

Nature lovers and litter pickers across Lewes have been horrified when year in, year out litter has been strimmed along with tall grasses and wildflowers on our roadside verges. While many of us wish for wilder verges, some verges do need strimming to allow visibility for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians, but when this occurs one would hope that it is only organic matter that is strimmed. Unfortunately crisp packets, chocolate wrappers and plastic bottles are just some of the environmentally harmful objects that end up strimmed into thousands of tiny pieces. This fragmented waste is then simply impossible to clean up and can then make its way into soil and waterways causing further, longer lasting pollution and risk to wildlife.

Who is to blame?

No single party is to blame, but the issue of a host of authorities and contractors carrying out both litter-picking and strimming, often from different contractors working to different schedules, is the main problem. Co-ordinating litter pickers to go ahead of strimmers is frustratingly a much bigger challenge than one would anticipate. It’s not as simple as asking strimmers to pick up litter first: this takes further time and money, and is in effect a different task. Better communication and a joint plan between all involved is key to getting this problem solved.

Who is involved?
  • Highways England – manages trunk roads, but is not responsible for litter clearance.
  • East Sussex Highways – the local authority responsible for verges within our county.
  • Aone+ – an outsourced contractor that carries out highway maintenance.
  • Lewes District Council – responsible for litter picking public spaces, verges, (not private land) and public waste collection; not able to access some areas of A26 and A27 due to complex health and safety regulations. LDC Waste Operatives carry out vast litter picks usually at night when roads are closed by another authority for maintenance.
  • idverde (previously known as Burleys) – an outsourced contractor that clears litter for local councils, usually within towns
How can we stop litter being strimmed?

As a litter-picking advocate, founder of Litter Free Lewes and a District Councillor, I would like to see a policy that makes litter clearance mandatory within 24 hours of planned strimming work. This has been discussed with Lewes District Council on many occasions and the council has received assurances of better co-ordination from Highways England, but we have seen this year that this is still not being delivered. The more the public raises the issue, the more prominent it becomes, so please do alert LDC if you come across strimmed litter.

I’m working with a small cross-party group of councillors to make sure that more people within the council are aware of this complex issue and I have written to Cllr Julie Carr, portfolio holder for Recycling, Waste and Open Spaces at LDC, for her support in stopping litter being strimmed.

Another option is for local litter-picking groups to be notified of planned strimming work, in order for them to organise a pre-strim pick. This would reduce costs, and I know many people who would gladly clear litter voluntarily rather than see litter strimmed. LDC are open to this idea but it would need consensus from across the different stakeholders and most likely have some health and safety implications.

As individuals we can all help by picking up litter when we see it, and binning it or recycling it. Each piece of litter removed from our environment is one less piece of litter that could potentially be strimmed.

 

Litter pickers

Volunteers with litter picked from the A27 in March 2019.

4 Comments

  1. Sam Roberts

    “Who is to blame?
    No single party is to blame”

    Yes there is – the litterers. We need more education and enforcement to really tackle this absolute crisis in the environment. Whilst local authorities and volunteer groups are having to foot the bill so to speak, there needs to be some serious thought about how to stop it happening in the first place.

    One suggestion I heard would be for fast food chains with drive throughs to print/write number plates onto food cartons and containers as they’re purchased – thus tracing back to and prosecuting offenders.

    Reply
  2. E S Thomas

    Has the problem of litter being the responsibility of the private contractor when on the central verge of the A27 but the responsibility of the adjacent LA been resolved? In the days of Group 4 having the contract, it waited until the suction from lorry traffic had blown it to the side of the A27 from the median strip. Dead animals and heavier debris lay for weeks in the median strip and I subsequently found it dumped on farm land (a distinctive cache of debris and a blue hard hat that had lain in the road for weeks). Clearly on the A27 where housing does not back onto the bypass around Brighton, the litter is not from the community but from poor netting on waste vehicles as well as inconsiderate drivers.

    Reply
  3. Milly Manley

    Hi Sam and ES – and other readers!

    Yes, Sam, I love the idea of reg. numbers being printed on fast food packaging, and yes, there needs to be a serious national effort focusing on the behavioural change of litterers themselves – although I’m not sure how that would best be implemented, I completely agree. I think all talk of littering, news stories, and voluntary picking up of litter helps to send out the message that it’s not ok, but that picking up litter or binning it in the first place is the best action for all.

    ES – I’m not quite sure I follow your first question – LDC are in the process of requesting a change of responsibility of litter clearance on the A27 from themselves to Highways England – we are waiting on correspondence from central government. While a lot of litter does come from un-netted/badly netted trucks, from litter picking the A27 myself I can be sure that a significant amount of waste remains to be snack and drink packaging.

    To all – since writing the above I’ve had a very encouraging meeting with Cllr Carr and Cllr Bird, and relevant LDC officers as well as James Newmarch from East Sussex County Council. Main outcomes from the meeting were:

    1) It’s easier to allocate wild verges than most of us think – LDC are putting together an info document to be shared publicly on ways to go about doing this. We can look into providing signs for both staff and public with information on wild verges.

    2) ESCC and LDC staff are going to be in direct contact about strimming and litter picking schedules in order to establish better working systems.

    3) LDC have some tree planting budget but often a lack of land, ESCC have land where trees can be planted – they will look at working together to match up budgets and land.

    4) LDC have increased the number of street sweeping staff since lockdown and I can share updated figures on staff numbers and the amount of waste they collect daily, soon.

    I will share further more detailed info as soon as I can.

    Reply
  4. Ian Cairns

    ‘to allow visibility for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians’ I can honestly say that as a cyclist or pedestrian I’ve never had a situation where I’ve needed a verge to be mown.

    Reply

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