Taking a closer look at litter on our trunk roads

The results highlighted that more than 500 items of litter were cleared from approximately 100m of slip road in a single week.

Road crews were asked to label the bags of litter collected over the week of 23-30 March from the Straiton Junction of the Edinburgh City Bypass, where we are also conducting monthly litter counts.

The bags were then delivered to AMEY's Bilston Glen Industrial Estate depot where our campaign officer went through them to get an accurate measure of the litter dropped there that week.

Bags were emptied onto a tarp and the litter contents sorted before being counted. Due to time limitations only two of the four slip-roads of the Junction were analysed. Two full bin bags from each site contained a total of 297 items of litter from the Westbound on-slip and 222 items of litter from the Eastbound off-slip, making for a total of 519 items of litter in the space of a week.

This analysis also gave us insights into the types of litter being dropped at each site, which gives us a better understanding of their origins too.

Here is a breakdown of what we found:

Going forward, results like these can be used to inform interventions in the area.