'It's like a rubbish dump': Motorists slam drivers who drop litter at side of M65
Motorists have criticised fellow drivers who drop litter at the side of the motorway in Lancashire.
Huge swathes of rubbish has been pictured at the side of the exit sliproad at Junction 12 of the M65 for Burnley. One motorist told LancsLive is "a disgrace" and described the scene as resembling "a rubbish dump".
They said: "I wanted to draw you to the litter problem on the M65 especially junction 12 - it’s like a rubbish dump. I have reported this but with not much success very complicated. It’s an absolute disgrace and the environment impact is a real concern to me."
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Although this particular section of the motorway is maintained by Lancashire County Council collecting discarded litter at the side of motorways and sliproads costs National Highways millions of pounds a year. In many cases motorways have to be closed to ensure the safety of the operatives.
National Highways use several methods to crack down on litter louts. These include car and lorry driver height bins at motorway services, using innovative cleaning techniques, like industrial vacuums, installing time lapse cameras to monitor littering, influencing littering behaviour through communications campaigns and anti-littering posters and signs and more rapid clean-up action.
A spokesperson for National Highways said: "Littering is a dreadful social problem. It’s unsightly and can have a deadly impact on wildlife. We’re working hard to tackle it on our roads, with our people out litter-picking every day.
"To keep them safe we have to close motorway lanes, which delays drivers and costs millions of pounds. But if people don’t drop litter in the first place it wouldn’t need to be picked up – so we urge road users to take their litter home.
"National Highways complies with its duties under the Environmental Protection Act and is responsible for collecting litter from England’s motorways and a small number of A-roads. Our litter strategy sets out how we aim to improve litter collection, be more responsive to customer feedback and work with others to tackle the issue.
"We work closely with partners, including local authorities, who collect litter on most of the country’s A-roads. We certainly don’t prioritise one route over another and our maintenance teams work from depots up and down the motorway and major A roads network including alongside the M65 and other routes in Lancashire.
"We’re trialling different ways of tackling the problem including using our message signs to reduce motorway littering. Partners such as Keep Britain Tidy and the RSPCA have recently welcomed our newest information campaign – ‘Lend a paw – bin your litter’ - drawing attention to the devastating impact of littering on our wildlife.
"And, for the ninth year running, we’ll soon be taking part in the Great British Spring Clean with our staff and many from our supply chain volunteering in community litter picks. As part of that we’re also launching trials in some of our laybys, including solar-powered compactor bins and ‘geofencing’ text messaging to drivers entering laybys where littering is prevalent, urging them to use bins or take their litter home."