16-07-2025
‘Britain now looks squalid': The heatwave litter bomb hitting our prettiest places
On Clean Up Britain's X (formerly Twitter) page is a picture of rolling green hills, blue skies, and the dappled shade of an old oak tree. It's a typical scene of British bucolic loveliness. Except for the discarded disposable barbecue, multiple takeaway coffee cups and the carpet of plastic food wrappers.
'That photo was taken on Hampstead Heath a few weeks ago, but I guarantee you'll see something similar all over the UK this week, when beaches and woodlands and beautiful spots will be strewn with c--p,' says John Read, founder of Clean Up Britain, a charity trying to stop littering and fly-tipping. 'This hot weather means that people go to a lovely place to have a nice time and leave it in a terrible state. There's an epidemic of litter in this country, and it's a big problem.'
As the UK experiences a long hot summer, having emerged from its third heatwave in four weeks, some of Britain's best known beauty spots are being inundated with visitors – meaning lots more people, lots more picnics and, sadly, lots more rubbish left behind.
Recently the River Stour, on the Essex-Suffolk border, has had an influx of visitors going kayaking and stand-up paddleboarding. But locals say that this Area of Outstanding Beauty, a favourite of the painter John Constable, is looking like a festival site, with piles of overflowing rubbish.
'When the bins are overwhelmed, people think it's alright to leave the rubbish next to the bins, but if you have a gust of wind it goes into the river, and animals can come along and eat discarded food waste, and can become ill,' says Darius Laws, a Conservative councillor on Colchester City Council, who lives nearby. '[ Dedham] isn't a festival, it's a village.'
Similarly, Dan Visser lives in Bowness in the Lake District, and says that areas around Windermere and Ullswater always get an increase in litter during the summer months. 'It's hugely disappointing to see it,' he says. 'When the weather gets hot in this country, we get giddy and people forget their responsibilities.'
Visser mentions an entire camp left behind near Ullswater lake recently, complete with tents, camping chairs and bin bags full of rubbish. Although the area is a National Trust site where 'fly camping' is banned, it's hard for park rangers to enforce the rules.
'People head into these protected areas and don't respect them,' says Visser. 'We need more education and awareness – these landscapes need to be protected for all of us and the next generation.'
But Nik Mitchell, an environmentalist and filmmaker living in Ramsgate, Kent, thinks education isn't enough and littering is getting worse where he lives. 'There are plenty of bins and big arrows directing people to them,' he says. 'It's sad to say, but I think the only thing that will work is fining people, and we need people on the ground actually issuing these fines.'
Dropping litter is now a criminal offence punishable by a fixed penalty notice (FPN) of £100 to £300, but it varies by local council as to how often they are enforced. Waltham Forest Council in London reported issued roughly 7,000 FPNs for litter dropping and fly-tipping in 2024. Meanwhile, only four fines have been issued for littering by West Oxfordshire District Council in the past decade. Clearly, in many areas, there's still a lot more that needs to be done to stop the litter bugs.
On a recent Monday morning, Mitchell says he woke up at 4am to do the Viking Coastal Trail – a 32-mile circular route around the Thanet coastline – on his electric skateboard. 'I saw litter everywhere, but Margate beach was the worst,' he says. 'There were barbecues, plastic cups, glass bottles. It's a consistent event around here. And there was one single guy from the council in a high-vis [jacket] trying to pick it all up.'
One of the worst offenders – particularly in hot weather – is plastic drinking cups, which Mitchell would like to see banned. A deposit return scheme – whereby consumers are charged an additional deposit fee for drinks in single-use containers, redeemed when they're returned for recycling – was delayed last year until October 2027.
Mitchell made a video of the amount of litter he found on Margate beach that morning and posted it to his social media channels, where it's since had half a million views. 'It's not just about the place looking like a rubbish dump, it's hazardous to us, to the environment and to wildlife.'
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Roy Beal, founder of the group Clean Jurassic Coast, says food rubbish left on the beach can also make birds more aggressive. 'The birds get used to picking at the food waste, spreading it around, and so then they start stealing it from people,' he says. 'We can pick up 100kg of litter off the beach at Durdle Door [in Dorset] in a single summer's day. We get a lot of tourists, but it's locals too. They leave plastic bottles, broken camping chairs, dirty nappies.
'We hand out bin bags and direct people to the bins, and yet people still litter and think somebody else will pick it up for them.'
During hot weather, litter can also lead to an increased risk of fire. 'Single-use barbecues, sky lanterns and other items of flaming litter, especially in dry hot weather, are a very real danger and should be banned,' says Allison Ogden-Newton, CEO of Keep Britain Tidy. 'Last year we lost hundreds of acres of precious and protected green space because of sparks from single-use barbecues, and the fire brigade had to deploy millions of gallons of limited water to put those fires out. When we are all out and about in this wonderful weather, we should treat our shared space with respect and leave it as we found it, hopefully litter free and safe from wildfire.'
From the banks of Loch Ness to a beach in Land's End, more than two million pieces of litter are dropped in the UK every day. Earlier this year, a survey by Keep Britain Tidy of 1,140 miles of urban and rural sites in England, found that more than nine out of ten contained litter. The cost to taxpayers for street cleaning is over £1 billion a year.
Meanwhile, a poll of the British public found that three quarters believe the nation's litter problem has worsened in recent years, with seven in 10 now noticing litter in their local area daily.
One of those was Debbie Bartlett, a children's author from Suffolk, who was inspired to set up Litter-Free Felixstowe in 2018 after noticing a lot of discarded plastic on her dog walks around the village. 'It's food wrappers, it's cans, it's plastic bottles, it's cigarette butts, it's bags of dog poo hanging from trees,' she says. 'It's not just the beach – we see it in town, in the woods, the skatepark, by the side of the roads coming into the village. This isn't a Suffolk issue, it's happening all over the country.'
The group now has 1,600 members who do group litter picks once a month, but they can only do so much. 'We also need the Government to listen and for there to be more joined-up thinking,' she says. 'We've worked with the local council to ensure there are enough bins now, but they could be emptied more often, particularly on hot weekends or a Bank Holiday. In the meantime, we can all do our bit.'
John Read from Clean Up Britain likens litter picking to 'mopping the kitchen floor while the taps are still running'. He thinks that local authorities have 'given up', and the civil service is 'useless and lethargic'.
'Much of Britain now looks run down and squalid,' he says. 'There are too many antisocial, lazy, selfish people in this country. Britain can be beautiful, but people don't take pride in their areas any more.'
Read, who says he regularly approaches anyone who he catches dropping litter, would like to see £1,000 on-the-spot fines issued for littering, and for dropping litter from a car to be punishable with points on a drivers' licence.
'I live near Stratford-upon-Avon, and while it attracts visitors from Japan and the US and all over the world, the pavements are covered in chewing gum and Red Bull cans. We're the filthiest country in the Western world and it's embarrassing.'
