TV show to feature litter campaign

BBC reporter Tony Livesey was in the city last week to make a five-minute film about Preston Council’s CCTV crackdown on people dropping rubbish in the city centre.

Tony spoke to Anne Millne-Riley, a litter education officer, about the council’s efforts to track down folk who were filmed throwing down wrappers and cigarette ends around the Flag Market area, despite most being a few yards away from a bin.

The Evening Post has featured several stories to help trace people caught on camera littering, resulting in five offenders being hit with fixed penalty notices.

Tony also interviewed council wardens who have mobile head cameras to capture litterbugs in the act.

And they visited the Evening Post offices in Preston to find out more about our coverage of the campaign.

Clearing up waste costs Preston Council around £2m a year, almost a tenth of their annual budget.

Anne said: “The campaign has had a really big impact - we can see the difference on the ground.

“I have been surprised about how positive the public has been with it. People are happy we are trying to do something about litter and even the people we have caught have realised it’s a bit of a fair cop.”

The piece is expected to go out on tomorrow’s One Show, from 7pm on BBC1.

The council has led a number of high profile anti-littering campaigns over the last few years.

They piled up three-and-a-half skips full of rubbish scooped off city streets over the course of a week to make a ‘Santa’s Grotto’ in December 2010.

In 2005, they used a loud hailer to scold people caught dropping litter in the We Are Watching You campaign.