Originally published May 2008
I have a pet hate. It's chewing gum. I never eat chewing gum, I don't see the point of it. If you want a nice minty taste in your mouth eat a mint or clean your teeth. If I want to see someone mindlessly opening and closing their mouths in a vacant, sloppy fashion I'll watch EastEnders with the sound off. But as much as I don't chew gum that's not why I hate it. Take a look around the streets in town. Look at the pavements around bus stops, road ends near traffic lights and other places where people stop and see what's on the pavements. I'll bet you there's a concentration of discarded chewing gum squashed flat and un-movable. When people get rid of their gum and just spit it out onto the pavement or road they are being very inconsiderate. If that gum got stuck on someone's shoe it could very easily get trampled into a carpet. We have a big blob of gum in the front passenger side footwell of our car thanks to someone not disposing of their gum properly. But even if the gum doesn't travel the world on the bottom of a shoe, if it just stays put where it's discarded it joins the other globules and over time is squashed into the pavement or road. It looks unsightly. It's not easy to clean off, it's estimated that the cost of cleaning each piece of gum is 3 times the cost of the gum itself and every town council spends tens of thousands of pound annually cleaning gum off pavements. Several have launched special campaigns and crackdowns to try and alleviate the problem and some are fining people up to £75 if they're caught dropping gum.
The reason I hate chewing gum is because the way it's discarded shows a distinct lack of thought about the care of our local environment. Yes it looks messy and yes it's difficult and expensive to remove, but to me it demonstrates people's lack of concern for their surroundings. To leave your gum on the floor (or under your school desk!) is to ignore the possibility of it ruining someone's shoes or carpet, ignore the possibility of injuring a pet or wild animal that happens upon it, ignore the unsightly nature of the myriad blobs of grey discarded gum and ignore the time and cost of removing the constellations of gummy pearls from the streets.
If discarding chewing gum demonstrates a thoughtlessness about the consequences, there is another hate of mine that demonstrates a deliberate selfishness along with it's thoughtlessness – fly tipping. I enjoy a walk in the countryside. I love getting away from the urban sprawl and finding some space to see the world at it's best. I love observing the lifecycle of nature as season passes to season, as predator finds prey, as habitats change. So when I'm in the middle of an ancient woodland 20 miles away from the nearest town and I discover the remains of a sofa it leaves me baffled and cross. Why would you drive out to the middle of nowhere and carry a sofa about a mile from the nearest road in order to dump it? I know you need to pay to leave some items at the tip, but after paying for petrol and the inconvenience caused by taking items miles away to dump them, surely fly tipping becomes more expensive? Councils will even take large household items away for you for free. Even fly tipping in an urban location shows an incredible disrespect for the local environment, other people's property and the people who end up having to dispose of your waste properly.
So here's a question I've been pondering while we've been preparing this café sundae. Waste is a big issue at the moment. We're constantly being told that we can't continue to clutter up our small island with a growing mountain of rubbish. We're being discouraged from using carrier bags and the supermarkets are beginning to take ecological issues on board. The push to be green has elevated waste disposal from just being an important ecological issue to being a hot political issue - Central Government has set local councils targets for recycling and councils are doing all they can to meet targets and to be seen to be green. We're constantly being told about the importance of recycling and the consequences of not doing. We've been provided with black boxes for glass and tins, a blue bag for paper and a green bin for garden waste. It's been made as easy as possible for us to recycle as much of our waste as we can.
So what about those people who continue to throw away waste as they did previously, who refuse to recycle? What about those people who fill their bins to capacity every week and deny the need to change their habits? What is there to separate them from the fly-tippers? If they persist in damaging the environment simply for their own convenience how do they differ from those who dump waste illegally? If they're willing to thumb their noses at the next generations rather than make the very small effort to sort their waste, how does their lack of concern for other people differ from that shown by those willing to inconvenience other people by dumping rubbish on others' property?
Is the current media focus on the issues of waste going to make any difference to these people or is it just chasing pavements - pavements covered in discarded chewing gum?
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