Few things rattle Perthshire ghillie Calum McRoberts.
But a further delay for the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is something the 53-year-old will not stomach.
Calum has spent the last decade collecting litter tossed out windows by inconsiderate drivers – “bad people”, in his eyes.
The River Tay fisherman said he would be “devastated” if the scheme does not go live as planned in August.
“It would be such a backwards step,” Calum said.
“It has been put back and put back for years. I can only see positives coming from it.”
In January, we joined him for a litter pick where he collected over 50 pieces of litter in a short stretch of countryside road.
Cans and bottles make up 70% of the litter that the ghillie finds on his Perthshire picks.
“It’s just a huge amount,” he said, “it’s so frustrating.”
The new scheme will introduce a new 20p charge for these single-use drinks containers – and, many hope, significantly limit the amount being littered.
On his litter picks, Calum has found dead voles and shrews trapped plastic bottles.
“I dare say there would be even more inside cans that you can’t see,” he added.
“Maybe if people saw that picture they would be more conscious of the harm they’re doing when they chuck stuff out of windows.
“It’s always a case of out of sight out of mind, isn’t it? If you don’t see it, it isn’t happening.”
New laws coming into force on August 16 mean people will have to pay an extra 20p when they buy drinks in single-use containers. They can then earn this back when they return the bottles and cans.
Some local firms claim the scheme will ‘decimate business’ but for others there is no time to lose in embracing a project that will help clean up both town and countryside.
Volunteers in Angus litter battle
This growing litter problem is not reserved for the roads of Perthshire.
East Haven Community Champion Wendy Murray has said litter pickers simply “cannot go on as it is”.
Wendy has been litter picking for decades, but now the amount of litter they find in Angus has become “absolutely massive”.
“We have people out in East Haven every single day litter-picking.”
In one 15 metre square area of Kirkton Industrial Estate last week, Wendy was able to fill a black bin bag to the brim with litter.
“I could have spent hours and hours there. I just couldn’t do it.”
Since December, she and other volunteers have collected over one and a half tonnes of litter – 20 black bags were filled solely with cans and bottles.
One of their biggest jobs is ensuring that local car parks are clear of litter.
“We go out and check if people have thrown litter out their windows the night before.
“If you go to any of our towns in Angus, car parks and road verges are absolutely full of it.
“It’s getting really worrying.”
And tonnes of litter aren’t going to go away by themselves.
Deposit Return Scheme will deliver ‘radical change’
“It’s just not getting better,” Wendy admitted, “so we need something big and bold that will make a massive impact.
She believes that the Deposit Return Scheme is part of the solution.
“We need a radical change like the scheme.”
“It will incentivise people not to drop those items,” Wendy continued.
“Yes, there will still be a very small number of bottles and drinks cans dropped, but the scheme will then encourage other people to pick them up.”
Zero Waste Scotland say that the scheme will lead to 34,000 fewer plastic bottles littered every day and an additional 76,000 tonnes recycled each year.
Violet Fraser collects litter around Dundee as often as she can. She has found litter that is still hanging around from the 1980s.
“Plastic does last for a very long time but it doesn’t last as a whole object for a long time,” she said.
“It breaks down and then you have microplastics and then nanoplastics, which are not only bad for the environment, but also for human health.”
Mice dying in discarded bottles
Violet too sees mostly cans, plastic and glass bottles on her litter picks.
She fears for wildlife that can easily become trapped inside dumped cans and bottles.
“I find a lot of dead mice inside glass bottles. It’s quite upsetting. We [litter pickers] see it much more often than we would like to.
It’s really important to address not just the aspect of littering as pollution and it being unsightly, but also that it is an actual danger to wildlife.”
Violet Fraser, litter picker based in Dundee
“And it is sad to think that if only there had been a Deposit Return Scheme in place, that might not have happened.
“So it is really important to address not just the aspect of littering as pollution and it being unsightly, but also that it is an actual danger to wildlife.”
And this is not a one time thing – Violet frequently finds small animals trapped inside bottles and cans while she is picking up litter in Dundee.
“There was a particularly bad day last year,” she explained, “on one litter pick alone, I stopped counting after [finding] about two dozen.”
“I have even found single bottles that had multiple mice in them.
“If people truly understood what is happening, it might make them behave differently.
“I’m hoping that the Deposit Return Scheme creates a visible and hopefully fairly immediate difference in the volume of letter that we’re finding,” Violet continued.
“My hope would be not only that we stop littering behaviour, but we also change the focus back onto not consuming so many single-use items.”
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