Cleaning up the country

Madam, – You are doing the nation some service by highlighting the ongoing scandal of our disgusting littering habits

Madam, – You are doing the nation some service by highlighting the ongoing scandal of our disgusting littering habits. In my meanderings about my own area I have noted a startling fact. On most of a 6km circuit that I regularly walk, there is not one metre of roadside free of litter, to a lesser or greater degree!

Fast food containers, with or without a portion of their original contents, paper coffee cups, and empty plastic bottles of a leading Cola brand form the most numerous examples, but the appetites of the nation are clearly advertised to all eyes in the multicoloured display of our detritus.

In a recent (admittedly nerdish) exercise near Clonee, Co Meath, I counted 1,500 cola bottles, beer cans, and assorted containers, all in a 100m stretch of road. What kind of people are we? – Yours, etc,

ANDY JONES,

Mullagh,

Co Cavan.