Advertising Flyers and Littering

We live in a world where finally it is being frowned on to wantonly throw litter away. At home and in the office we are encouraged to separate and recycle our rubbish. But once we get out onto the street the focus seems to have drifted a bit. Nobody seems to care that we throw rubbish onto the ground, cigarettes get stubbed out anywhere and chewing gum is tossed away regardless of how far it is to the nearest rubbish bin.

But most blatantly, it is the people who think they are doing us a service, who are actually causing the biggest mess on our pavements. At street corners and transport hubs they proliferate. Whether at election time to hand out candidate flyers, or in the evening to advertise the local nightclubs, or at any other time, we see them standing around forcing their little pieces of paper into our hands. Because it is ‘information’, and ‘for our benefit’, they feel justified in carrying on with this practice. They have to get their message across, and they’ve decided that this is the most efficient way of doing it.

It is very easy to work out the main pedestrian flow, because ‘downstream’ from these people is a huge spread of discarded flyers on the ground. It starts after about one metre, grows rapidly for another four or five meters to a full ground-covering layer, and then dwindles away over the next 10 or so metres. And does anyone do anything about it?? Of course not, freedom of speech or freedom of the press, or freedom of some damn thing, but anyway they continue handing out rubbish that is promptly dropped on the ground at their feet.

And when they have finally handed out their complete supply, what happens next? They walk away. A simple as that. No attempt whatsoever to clean up the mess they directly created. “We didn’t drop them”, they whine, “the public did, it’s their fault.”

Well guess what – you can tell by the number that were dropped immediately exactly how much we wanted that information. Not at all!! It’s their information, their paper, their rubbish, and their obligation to clean it up.

I sincerely hope that our city councils are actively charging these organisations for the right to stand on the street and litter the pavements. It looks like a great source of revenue to cover the cost of cleaning up the mess afterwards. And if the price is high enough, it might serve a dual purpose. It will bring in much needed cash and it might even dissuade them from repeating the practice again in the future. Thus we will perhaps better encourage a more responsible use of our scarce resources, instead of watching them being consumed in the printing and discarding of the paper.

So we need to understand that this mass littering is a crime, if not against the law, then certainly against us and against the planet for incredibly bad use of our resources. It must stop.

Tags: advertising, advertising flyer, flyers, littering, promotion, recycling, rubbish