Rubbish is something I just can’t stand. Not so much in my house (it is a real mess in there) but I hate garbage on the streets. I always get really angry when I get home and find cigarette buds, sandwich bags, paper cups and a lot more in front of my door. My husband calls me jokingly ‘the garbage nazi’ but so far I haven’t given up anyone to the garbage police yet. But sometimes I wish I had the guts to go over to people who dump litter and arrest them myself!!
But now that is not necessary anymore since there is a proper website for us ‘garbage nazi’s’: Fix my street‘ This is a website where you can report problems in your street and then they will try to fix it. It works like this: when you see a problem in your street, you can make a picture and load it up onto the FixMyStreet site. You fill in your postcode and the picture and your request appears on a map like this: http://www.fixmystreet.com/report/41602
After this Fixmystreet sends your request to the responsible council and you get updates about the status of your request. It is very simple and it works!
I asked them for a bin at the bus stop in front of my house. Hoping that this would make people stop dropping the leftovers from their junkfood and cigarettes in front of my door. And you know what? After three days the bin was placed!! The mess is considerably less.
It is a miracle. And I am really happy.
I hope it stays there for a while…
Beatpolitics is created by me, Beatrijs Overdijkink. I am a writer, originally from Amsterdam, lived in London for a while and just moved to Prague. I write about political subjects big and small. Feel free to comment on anything I say. I love a good debate!
Freek | 14-Feb-09 at 10:46 am | Permalink
This is another example of an overinstitutionalised world. I think that many of the problems we have in today’s society stem from the institutionalisation of tasks that used to be performed by families, friends and the neighboorhoud. If we would just do a little bit more ourselves and not expect the government (WHO is the government anyway??) to do it, we would have less problems and have to pay less taxes and hence enjoy more freedom.
Beatrijs | 14-Feb-09 at 11:03 am | Permalink
What do you mean? That I have to clean my street myself? I agree with that. to a certain extend. I am responsible for where I live. But and this is a big BUT: If a group of people does not take responsibility for the streets, because it is not their street, and keep on throwing their mess literally in front of my door what do you want me to do? Police the street myself? Clean it every day?? I do that but it makes me angry because I NEVER throw anything on the streets and yet I am still cleaning up other people’s mess. A simple solution of putting a bin next to the bus stop has resulted in less littering. I will take the responsibility for my street if I need to. But some people mess it up for everyone. And let me tell you that I pay 1280 pounds council tax a year. So a bin is not too much to ask.
Be at Politics :: Preventing littering own responsibility or not? | 02-Mar-09 at 2:56 pm | Permalink
[...] Freek wrote in response to my blog about littering: This is another example of an overinstitutionalised world. I think that many of the problems we [...]
Beatrijs | 02-Mar-09 at 2:57 pm | Permalink
Hi Freek I have been thinking about your remark about personal responsibility a lot. It reminds me of this quote made by Thatcher in 1987 in Womens Own magazine:
“I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it! …and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations…”
As I said in my previous comment, I agree with this to the extent that we are responsible for our own actions, our neighbourhood our city etc. It is not ‘the government’ who litter the streets, it is us. But I have problems with finding a solution without the involvement of a government. Because how do we clean it up? How do we, as individuals, arrange simple things, like preventing littering, ourselves in giant and anonymous cities like London? I can do my duty and clean my doorsteps, which I do, but how do I as an individual persuade my neighbours and the unknown tourists to stop littering and clean up? To manage that would be a fulltime task.
Isn’t that the reason why we ‘outsourced’ this responsibility to the local government by paying tax? Besides that I would be perfectly happy if there would be a campaign to make people aware that they should not drop their litter on the streets and I would also be happy if there was more law enforcement to accompany that campaign. Not so liberal, but I think for now that will work the best.
I would be really happy if parents would teach their children again that they share the streets with others and that they should respect the public spaces by keeping them clean.
So what I want to know from you is; do you agree with the complexity of an answer to simple issues like this? How would you solve the problem of littering without the involvement of the government? Let me know.