Litter and McDonalds

A few days ago I took our car to the garage for its annual inspection. Going to the garage meant going past the local McDonalds, and... well, there's a story to be told:

In the past, people have asked me why it is that there is so little litter on the streets and cycle-paths in our photos and videos from Assen. They're not completely clear of litter but they are swept regularly which helps a great deal. But in general you see little litter because in comparison with other places that I'd lived, relatively little is dropped here. In part this comes by providing somewhere to put it. Cyclepaths have bins on them, into which most litter from children and teenagers gets thrown (some miss, of course, so you also see some next to these bins), and that helps a lot.

Some of the rubbish is in the bin, the
rest is on the ground.

However, the area around this particular fast food restaurant is a bit different. My commuting route passes quite nearby and I've often seen what people do after going through the drive-through: The car window opens, and out comes packaging and quite often food and drink as well. I can only assume that people find it isn't quite so tasty as the advertisements suggest is is. I don't understand why people do this, but reading around the internet leads me to believe that throwing stuff through car windows is a common reaction world-wide to buying food from McDonalds.

Now I'd not want to make any accusations against a company known to be as litigious as McDonalds, so I'd better make it clear that of course I'm sure they're completely innocent of any wrong-doing. But when I looked for it and took photos of it, there did still seem to be an awful lot of rubbish from this fast food joint spread out over the whole 4 km back home from the garage by bike:



In my opinion, it's a very good thing that McDonalds is located only in the outskirts of the city and not in the centre. While this results in litter reaching in a line from where the fast food is bought along the cycle-paths to where it is consumed, this at least indicates that many of the people who buy and eat this stuff are actually getting some exercise at the same time.

Maintaining the network

I've known comments from other places about cycle paths not being maintained properly. That excuses are made that the paths are too narrow for vehicles which sweep up, clean them or to grit them.

These two photos show two different types of cycle path. The first is a main cycle route for high speeds (I featured it previously, with video), while the second is a path past housing (motor vehicle access to these houses is at the rear). In the first case you'll see a council maintenance vehicle parked. Due to the cycle path being of the usual width for this part of the world it is much wider than the vehicle, so no problem with access. In the second photo you can see the characteristic lines in dust left by a road sweeping vehicle a few minutes previously.

Both cycle paths are about four metres wide, and both have lighting at night. A well maintained path with lighting is what is needed for a good level of social safety.

Litter and social safety of cyclists

There have been a few posts on other people's blogs lately which have touched on the issue of litter, fly-tipping etc. on the environment for cyclists.

It may seem like a minor issue, but as the BBC pointed out recently, the presence of litter on the streets is one of those things that makes people feel unsafe.

If people feel unsafe on the streets then they won't cycle. This is what is meant by social safety.

For cycling to be popular the environment has to be non-threatening. This means well maintained streets, well maintained cycle paths, a low crime rate etc. This in addition to making cycling routes direct and making cycling feel like a safe thing to do (subjective safety).

I previously covered the aspect of litter by showing how cyclists here are provided with special litter bins for use while cycling.

Update: "Son of Shaft" posted a comment below with a link to a particularly interesting article in New Scientist about related research. Click here to go directly to the article.

Rubbish bins for cyclists

One of the problems that occurs when all children cycle to school is that they tend to drop litter. Here's a solution to the problem: a "blikvanger" or "can catcher". On routes used by a lot of children to get to school you find these litter bins for cyclists to throw their litter into without stopping.

This is an older style cyclists rubbish bin, using a net instead of a metal cone, on a route north of Assen. The opening is about a metre wide, and the cycle path is 2.5 m wide. It's on a popular rural school route.

You may have seen the first photo before. It comes from our page of photos of Dutch cycling infrastructure.

It also features on our article about how waste and recycling is dealt with in the Netherlands.

Update November 2009: This short piece in the local news paper about publicity surrounding an anti-litter campaign shows the size of these bins. The openings are a metre in diameter, so that even those with not such a good aim can get their litter into the bin while moving. If you're going to copy this initiative for your own city, you need to get the scale right !

This is one of those small things that makes a difference for cyclists.

The bin in the first photo can also be seen on Google Maps Streetview and it features in a video about school cycling in winter.