Freightlink are supporting the Great British Spring Clean this year, running until the 23rd April, by reminding our customers of the environmental consequences of leaving rubbish at the roadside and in lay-bys.

This can be anything from food and packaging left by HGV and commercial van drivers in a lay-by after staying for the night or old pallets and other packaging dumped on the roadside after a delivery. It is a massive issue that greatly affects our environment and the cleanliness of our country.

The Keep Britain Tidy organisation says that 30 million tonnes of litter is dropped every year. That starts with a single wrapper or can. This results in over £1 billion of UK tax-payers money being spent to clean our streets every year, an unnecessary expenditure if we all cleaned up after ourselves and did our part.

The 'Don't be a tosser' initiative tackles the significant problem of littering from vehicles that occurs up and down the country. Highways England collects approximately 200,000 sacks of litter from the UK road network every year. That's around 7,500 tonnes in total.

Highways England as part of their Litter Strategy has stated; 

"Litter is a serious issue. It harms the environment, upsets our customers and damages our reputation. It also puts our people at risk when they have to collect it and it diverts time and money that’s better spent on improving the road network."

Keep Britain Tidy is doing great work to improve our situation with 600,000 bags of litter and 9 billion plastic bags collected.

Freightlink supports the message that our roads and countrysides are not one big rubbish bin. We need to protect the environment and our cities.

You can do your part by ensuring all your personal rubbish is disposed of correctly and by picking up litter you may see that has been carelessly discarded by others.

Together, we can make a difference. Find out more about the campaign on the Keep Britain Tidy website.