Give your litter a lift and keep North Lanarkshire beautiful

We've teamed up with North Lanarkshire Council to appeal to residents to get rid of their litter responsibly.

With more than half of the litter recorded on our streets coming from people eating and drinking;50 tonnes of litter abandoned on Scotland’s roadsides each month and 1,700 tonnes of rubbish collected by North Lanarkshire Council from street bins and litter picking in 2021, the campaign will make it clear there is no excuse for littering.

Supported by McDonald’s and Costa Coffee the campaign, based on successful iterations of our Roadside Litter campaign, will be rolled out across North Lanarkshire, focussing on hot spots where roadside littering is a particular problem and around takeaways.

Barry Fisher, our CEO commented, “It is really exciting to be launching our partnership with North Lanarkshire Council to tackle litter, particularly by the roadsides. Our national surveys show that 78% of A roads and main roads are blighted with food and drink items – all of which should have been binned or recycled.

“We're pleased that the local campaign is being supported by Costa and McDonald’s and as part of this partnership we look forward to sharing learning from some of our past national roadside litter interventions and to developing bespoke and new ones to help fight the national looming litter emergency at a local level.”

“There is no excuse for littering,” said Councillor Michael McPake, Convener of the Environment and Transportation Committee. “Use a public bin or take it home and put it in your household waste bin – it’s that simple.

“Unfortunately too many people don’t do that, and a particular problem is people throwing litter from their vehicle.

“As a result, our roadsides are a mess of cans, bottles, takeaway cups, and food wrappers. As well as making the area look terrible, litter is harmful to the environment and it’s difficult, dangerous and expensive to clean up.

“So we are appealing to the public through this campaign to give their litter a lift and take it home. Please take responsibility for your litter and help us make North Lanarkshire a clean, attractive place to live, work, learn, invest and visit.”

McDonald’s Operations Consultant, Julian Rumsey said: “We’re really excited to be partnering with the Council, Keep Scotland Beautiful and Costa to help drive impactful change on litter across North Lanarkshire. As a local business, we will continue to do everything we can – from daily litter patrols to community clean ups – to help keep our streets clean. Get involved - give your litter a lift!”

We are facing a looming litter emergency.  If you are interested in having #YourSayOnLitter do attend an event and make your thoughts known as part of the Scottish Government consultation on a revised Scottish Litter and Flytipping Strategy.  You can read our reports, data and how we can support this on our litter web pages.