Stewart Paterson: Can we solve Glasgow's litter in parks problem by removing bins?

In the summer it becomes more visible and creates an unsightly mess.

Cue angry residents questioning why they pay their council tax.

There are bins all over the city.

Every main street has bins and there are dozens of bins in the parks.

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You are never that far away from a bin in Glasgow, yet still there is litter left lying around rather than disposed of responsibly.

Perhaps the bins could be emptied more frequently.

Perhaps they are emptied frequently and they just get filled up very quickly.

Because bins are often see full to the brim, people also complain there are not enough bins.

But maybe there are plenty bins and rather the problem is there is too much rubbish.

And maybe there are too many bins and we could think about removing them, for example from parks, as part of a drive to reduce the amount of litter and force people to take it away with them.

When the bins are full, we seem to blame those we pay to empty them more than those who fill them.

Instead of blaming those who are responsible for managing the waste, that is collecting it and disposing and recycling of it, we should maybe be taking a look at those who are producing it and those who are discarding it.

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And on this there is more than one aspect. First there is the excessive about of unnecessary packaging.

Efforts have been made by many companies to reduce packaging or make it recyclable but still there is too much.

Some things have to be put in packaging.

Liquids, obviously need to be put in a bottle or can of some description.

Food, however, is another thing altogether.

Many goods that we buy, in supermarkets especially, do not need anywhere near as much plastic packaging as they have.

This is more an issue for generating household waste that leads to domestic bins being filled quickly and then complaints inevitably follow that the council doesn’t collect them often enough.

Then there is the creation of the litter in our streets and in particular, at this time of year, in our parks.

In Glasgow’s parks on a summer’s day, we can see the bins overflowing with rubbish.

It is as common a sight as a man with his top off and his t-shirt tucked into the waistband of his shorts.

Bottles, cans, pizza boxes, carrier bags all spilling out of the large bins, the some people say there are not enough of.

It is no longer the small basket style waste bins of old.

These newer bins take far more rubbish than their predecessors, yet still they are incapable of dealing with the ever growing amount of rubbish we generate.

If the bin, no matter how big it is, is full and then it becomes overflowing and rubbish piles up high all around it. Whose fault is that?

Is it A , the council because they have not emptied the bin before it reached that stage.

Or is it B, the people who, when they see a bin is already full, decide to just leave their rubbish beside it.

I’ll leave people to decide for themselves but I would offer this.

If someone has managed to carry a pizza in a box half a mile or more from the pizza takeaway to a nice sunny spot in the park, why are they suddenly incapable of carrying the empty box on their way home until they find somewhere to dispose of it.

Perhaps the pizza shops can provide a recycling service where you can take it back and they deal with it.

If someone can carry, in a plastic bag, a six pack of cola, lager, cider, a bottle of wine, red, white or tonic, or whatever else they are drinking in the parks, why can’t they use the same bag to carry the empty cans or bottles to the nearest empty bin, or even back home with them.

Again, perhaps the shops or supermarkets could provide a waste recycling facility for packaging to be returned to them.

Almost all of the rubbish that is generated in the parks is bought outside the park.

If you can bring it in, full of food or drink, you can take it back out again when it’s empty.

So, given that parks themselves are not generators of rubbish, maybe we should remove litter bins from the parks and force everyone to take rubbish away with them.

Removing bins might appear to be a bonkers idea, but in Hong Kong litter reduced by 70% in country parks when bins were removed.

Perhaps we could give it a try here.

And if we had a system where shops also provided waste deposit and recycling people could either take the empty containers back to the shop where the product was bought or take it home with them and put it in their own bin.

It is our city. We have some beautiful parks all over it that should be spaces we are proud of and should be taking care of.

And while the council has a responsibility to empty the bins, we as citizens have a greater civic duty to keep the streets and parks clean without expecting others to clean up after us.