Clean Up Scotland

Litter isn’t nice. It spoils the places we live, work and visit. It devalues our beautiful country.

Clean Up Scotland is our campaign to tackle litter. Whether you are an individual, member of a community, school or a business, we can all work together to improve our environment.

Through Clean Up Scotland, we raise awareness of our litter problem, take action and inspire others to do the same.

We can help you to organise a litter pick, find a litter pick happening near you or nominate someone for our Clean Up Scotland Hero award. If you are a business, we can organise volunteering activities and CSR days, or you can support our campaign financially, knowing that your money will make a real difference to our environment.

Together we can make a difference.

How to organise a litter pick

Why do we need to Clean Up Scotland?

Littered and dirty places have a negative impact on over a million people living in Scotland. Our evidence shows that problems such as litter, dog fouling, graffiti and flytipping are worse for those living in our poorest communities. Not only that, they are getting worse. Littered and dirty areas are contributing to poor health and well-being: litter is becoming a social justice issue.

You can find out more about this problem and what we are doing to try and tackle it on our litter pages where you will find links to our most recently published reports on public perception and the on the ground situation.

To monitor issues such as litter, dog fouling, flytipping, flyposting and graffiti, and in partnership with Scotland’s local authorities, we carry out annual local environmental quality surveys at a random selection of sites across Scotland every year. We do this using the Local Environmental Audit Management System and provide detailed information to each local authority which informs their policy and campaigns.

Where does litter come from and who cleans it up?

The short answer is that we are all responsible for litter. The annual environmental quality surveys we carry out in partnership with local authorities across Scotland, show that the general public is responsible for 91% of the litter found in our country.

If litter is not dropped, then it doesn't need to be picked up.

Local authorities are required to keep their land clear of litter and refuse and keep our roads clean, which means that they are responsible for cleaning littered areas. This is an expensive task, so local authorities also put time and effort into preventing litter being dropped in the first place.

Find out how to report litter in your local authority.

To report flyipping you should contact the local authority in the area that the flytipping has occurred. By typing in the postcode here you can find the local authority details.