From The Daily Mail:
England's litter problem has not improved in the past year and may get worse as public spending cuts bite, a report has suggested. A survey by Keep Britain Tidy found sweet wrappers, drinks, fast food and smoking-related rubbish had all increased in the last 12 months.
It found eight out of 10 places are blighted with cigarette butts - an increase of 5 per cent...
A spokesman added: "We know that for a lot of people, local environment quality is very important to them and £858 million was what it cost last year to clean England's streets. We are spending an astronomical amount of money on it and if that was to reduce considerably, it could lead to worsening litter."
Sweeping the streets is a perfectly legitimate core function of the state, but divide that £858 million by a population of 52 million (assuming he really means 'England', even though his organisation calls itself 'Keep Britain Tidy') and that works out at £17 per person per year (money well spent IMHO).
The net cash transfer from smokers to each non-smoker is in the order of £150 a year, so even if the entire cost of litter collection were down to cigarette butts (which it quite clearly isn't), yer average non-smoker is still better off to the tune of £133 per year.
And the fact that a large proportion of the extra cigarette stubs in the street is down to the smoking ban probably escapes them.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
No, that's not "astronomical".
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7 comments:
Not to mention the terminally stupid notion that cigarette butts are the most prevelent form of litter.
For example ,how many cigarette butts could i get in the top and bottom of a disgarded fast food container.
Just do the math.
It's thousends.
The Daily Woo's article contains a photo of an amazingly rubbish-strewn Trafalgar Square. Couldn't have been taken just after a demo had left, by any chance?
Butts rot remarkably quickly, coke tins don't plastic bottles dont, polystrene packaging doesn't, all arrive on the street after the recycling wagon has been and 'done it's thing' along with broken glass bottles, cardboard boxes, plastic toys etc etc.
Keep Britain Tidy is another bloody quango that needs instant termination.
OT, but there isn't a recent post to hang this from. Way back, e.g. http://markwadsworth.blogspot.com/2010/01/ice-cream.html among others, the subject of the effect/non-effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation was argued about in the context of the cooling effect. The CLOUD gang at CERN are close to publishing, http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/12/sunny_days_for_cloud_experimen.html. Via WUWT
Anon, Bill, yup.
VFTS, I walk across Traf. Sq. regularly and have never, ever seen it that messy. So you are almost certainly correct. And ta for the cloud thingy, I do sometimes wonder what happened to that (although the real life readings over centuries on sun spots and weather are more reliable anyway, IMHO).
And the fact that a large proportion of the extra cigarette stubs in the street is down to the smoking ban probably escapes them.
I'd like to see the stats on that.
JH, the article says "eight out of 10 places are blighted with cigarette butts - an increase of 5 per cent [compared to a year ago]".
Seeing as the smoking ban has been in for three years, you may have a point. But compared to three years ago, there is quite clearly more smoking in the street and ergo more cigarette butts than there was before.
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