Local elections: Peterborough parties set out how they will tackle fly-tipping and littering

In part one we feature Labour and the Green Party. Part two will feature the Conservatives and the Lib Dems.

Shaz Nawaz (Labour Party)

Fly-tipping is the scourge of our time.

The Labour Party will Engage, Educate and Enforce – and with rigour.

We will not throw free bulky waste collections out as an election ‘carrot’. Labour will do what it has asked the Conservatives to do for years. Re-introduce.

CCTV is becoming cheaper to install. We have ‘gigafast’ broadband. So, let’s get cameras up at hotspots and crack down on serial offenders. Enforce. Name and shame. There is no excuse.

We will engage with education providers to talk to young children about how adults are destroying their legacy.

We will educate and support businesses and owners of multi-tenanted households to ensure that they recognise their responsibility to the area they make their money from. And we will encourage people to use the recycling site by making it more accessible to small businesses but also drive-up recycling rates.

We will address the scourge of fly-tipping by addressing the root causes, support people to expose and report it and make it a strategy, not simply a short-term tactic in the run up to the elections.

Fly-tipping needs to be eliminated with a zero-tolerance approach and the Labour Group will do just that.

Julie Howell (Green Party)

Litter and fly-tip multiply in hotspot areas as people tend to have a ‘they did it so I can do it’ mentality. Therefore, it is crucial to eliminate hotspots as they appear, with the use of CCTV and a concerted effort to trace and prosecute those responsible.

When people feel the risk of getting caught and punished far outweighs the benefits of fly-tipping they will be more inclined to dispose of their rubbish responsibility. More ways to ‘do the right thing’ should be provided, including regular bulky waste drop-off points and free door-step collections provided by the council.

As we know people are inclined to copy one another’s behaviour; more highly-visible community litter picks and bulky waste drop-offs will normalise disposing of goods the right way.

Information about what happens to items after disposal could promote an appreciation of how harmful our consumer habits have become and encourage people to repair and repurpose items rather than buying new ones. This would be a significant behavioural change that would take time, but we cannot continue to create waste at the rate that we are as we are running out of places to put it and using up the planet’s valuable resources.