In our development and with regard to planning I know that City of Edinburgh carefully consider refuse disposal in housing site design. Waste disposal areas are easily accessible to residents and collection crews and bin stores are designed to encourage recycling by making bin and deposit points individually accessible. There are multiple bin stores within the development to reduce distance residents need to travel to deposit waste. There was early engagement with waste management authorities during the planning stage and City of Edinburgh Council provide guidance on good practice in residential waste facility design. Despite this there are areas throughout the UK where littering is a real issue.

Hand in hand with good design practices it is my perception that we are going to have to encourage more residents not to drop litter important in that might be increasing general litter awareness and how relatively easy a problem it is to solve. It is my perception that there is a stigma associated with picking up litter but for me one of the most satisfying things that I can do on a sunny day with a spare hour is go round my development and pick up litter. On occasion I do it with my wife and once last year I organised a group from our development to tackle a particularly bad location. Over the years I have regularly been involved in the organisation of athletic run and triathlon races and sometimes wonder whether it would be possible to hold a mass participation event where participants pick up litter. I like the idea of giving hundreds of households a free litter picker and bin hoop (that they could keep), breaking down a bit of the stigma attached to litter picking, showing how easy, empowering and enjoyable it is and I suspect it might be easy to obtain sponsorship from a source wishing to associate themselves with such a positive endeavour. I would also love to see greater requirement on local businesses to tackle litter around their units. I feel the opportunity cost of action for those locally are the lowest and the rewards the highest and so feel that as local stakeholders they are most likely to benefit from improvements.

Another plus point about litter picking is the time it grants you to study the urban design decisions of your local area. Inevitably you will be on foot often wandering behind a lot of the areas not normally accessed. While you can consider virtually any aspect of design it is particularly good for seeing experiencing and understanding just how successful footpath links between developments can be.