TFL Please keep your rubbish with you at all times

     A few months ago, I wrote an open letter to Boris Johnson about litter in London, especially on the tubes which at times are a disgusting mess of food scraps, drink cans and newspapers. I didn’t have a response from Boris, so put my quest for cleaner trains aside until I noticed a post about trains in Mumbai. http://janmerryauthor.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/anti-litter%20campaign

     India is not known for being spick and span and their trains suffer over-crowding and harassment issues, but at least they're clean. I contacted the blogger and asked if all Indian trains were so clean.

Joe Brucker Taipei train

Spot the difference: London train

 Here is her response:

Its surprisingly clean on the trains - what you might see out of the window is a different thing entirely! You would never see all that paper like in your post - someone would have nabbed it to re-sell it within minutes. http://mumbaimag.com/train-spotting-mumbai-local/

India trains are clean but have other problems hindustantimes.com

     Doesn’t that tell you something about our throw-away society and how here in the ‘developed’ world we should and could do more about our waste. Perhaps Tranport for London could change those annoying announcements from Please keep your belongings with you at all times to Please keep your rubbish with you at all times and have consideration for other travellers by taking your rubbish home with you.

Letter to Boris: Fix the Litter

   Dear Boris

   Could you please, please, please help clean up Litter London? 

   As you love to say, London is the best city in the world, but is it fast becoming one of the dirtiest too?

   On every stroll around this fabulous walking city, you can’t help but notice rubbish littering footpaths and roads, markets and High Streets, parks and waterways, gutters and lanes, railway lines and bus routes. It is so very depressing.

Picnicers in Harringay have thoughtfully made a neat pile of their
litter but they need to think a little harder and take it home with them.

   So often I see people discarding litter carelessly without a thought for the consequences. Cigarette ends, chewing gum, receipts, tickets, chip wrappers and packaging are thrown to the ground with abandon. Thickets and hedges, still bare from winter, are frequently traps for litter and make a sorry sight with their tangles of rubbish.

   London needs an education campaign to build awareness that our environment is being ruined. Even the Tube is not exempt with half eaten sandwiches, chicken bones and spilled drinks rattling around the carriage with the newspapers. I ask you...is that OK? Your banning of alcohol on the tube has been a great success and many admire you for doing what the majority want and not kowtowing to a vocal minority. Now we need please-take-your-rubbish-with-you announcements along with the regular reminders to keep belongings close-by.

   Just like a makeover and spruce up make us feel good about ourselves, a clean-up campaign would have the knock on effect of bringing back some pride in the environment and make Londoners feel good about their city...sort of like the Olympics did.

Even the Tube is treated as a rubbish dump.

   You love to extol London’s virtues. Why not start a Clean Capital Campaign and encourage schools to participate. Perhaps you could ask your friend Dave to spread the word countrywide because so many verges along highways and byways are shamefully strewn with litter.

   OK it would cost a little, but you could run a competition for home made ads like you get on YouTube and ask the BBC to run them as community announcements. Besides, it would pay for itself anyway in reduced road sweeping and garbage collections.

   Just think Boris, you could be remembered as the PM... oops, I mean mayor, who put his dosh where his mouth is and created a city so clean it was the envy of the world.

Start a war on litter louts

Congratulations to Claire Balding's partner, Alice Arnold, on tackling a litter lout she witnessed throwing litter from the car window. I have also seen this happen and been absolutely shocked at this ignorant attitude to the environment. I wasn't brave enough to take-on the litterers who threw a bundle of McDonald's boxes and wrappings from the back seat window into a Crouch End street. I was however extremely upset by the incident and other similar behaviours I've witnessed over a number of years.

We anti-litterers must be bold and take on those who abuse the environment. Perhaps Claire Balding could make it a Countryfile campaign. An education campaign is certainly needed to let young and old know this thoughtless attitude is wrong. We all suffer for their ignorance.