Dog homeowners are more and more hanging poo baggage from timber not solely out of laziness but in addition nervousness over touching litter bins because the pandemic, say anti-litter campaigners.
The rising phenomenon has alarmed volunteer litter pickers, who’ve voiced issues over cleanliness, unsightliness and environmental impact.
Emma Powell, a Keep Britain Tidy “litter hero” ambassador and organiser of the Castle Point Clean Up Crew in Essex, has observed a rise in the problem since lockdown.
Mrs Powell stated that because the pandemic “people do not even want to touch the bin lids”.
She added: “There is this element of revulsion and disgust because they are overly concerned about bacteria.”
Instead, Mrs Powell has observed canine poo baggage piled on high of bin lids or hung from tree branches, beneath the pretence that the walker will “pick it up on their way back”.
“Hanging bags from trees is incredibly frustrating for our volunteers as they are hard to remove with a litter picker, especially if we don’t wish to tear the bag in fear of the contents being released,” Mrs Powell shared.
‘Like hanging baubles on a tree’
In Evesham, Worcestershire, Laura Van Toller was so dismayed by the quantity of litter that she noticed as a volunteer cleansing it up that she rewrote the 12 Days of Christmas to replicate what she discovered.
One line goes: “On the sixth day of Christmas the litter louts sent to me, six dog poo bags hanging in a tree.”
A self-described “chief womble” at volunteer group Anti-Litter Evesham, Ms Van Toller has change into fed up with the scourge of walkers leaving their canine poo baggage on branches “like hanging baubles on a tree”.
Referring to how lengthy it takes for poo baggage to degrade, she stated: “By leaving out a dog poo bag, they are doing more harm than if they had just left the poo.”
Not solely is the act of hanging the baggage on timber thought of socially reprehensible, nevertheless it may additionally land the canine walker with a set penalty discover (FPN).
Castle Point borough council confirmed that leaving a poo bag on a tree could be classed as littering and carry a most FPN of £250, no matter whether or not the bag is biodegradable.
The council additionally identified that in sure public areas such an act could be thought of “dog fouling”, which carries an FPN of £100.
The National Trust, which welcomes canine homeowners to 80 per cent of its gardens, coast and countryside, is taking measures to deal with “the rise in discarded dog poo”.
A spokesman stated: “We’ve been addressing this by increasing the number of waste bins at our places, promoting our canine code of conduct and asking our visitors to bag and bin dog poo or take it home.”
