How to stop fly-tippers: Do we put a levy on food takeaways?

“Oh, my God,” my friend said.

“The sheer nerve of it.”

We stood at the side of the little country road and contemplated the jumble of wood, laminate and junk tossed into the ditch.

Somebody, it seems, had decided that they no longer wanted the white locker with the drawers, so what they did was, they put it into the boot of their car and flung it out into the ditch.

By now, the drawers – some of which had detached completely from the main structure, and some of which were still barely hanging in there – were damp and decomposing.

The same somebody had also decided there was similarly no need for the heavy-quality green canvas bag with shoulder strap – the kind you might wear slung across your chest with your water and protein bar while traversing the Himalayas – or the several broken photograph frames, which also garnished the hedgerow.

While they were at it, they clearly thought, they might as well throw in the neatly tied, medium-large sized clear plastic bag full of what looked like recycling, and, er, a large, used, disposable pull-up. Ugh

Who, we wondered, would go to the trouble of gathering that recycling together and putting it into a heavy-duty clear plastic bag - and then just dump it on the side of the road?

Steaming, we were.

We finished our walk and on the way back we stopped to talk to some county council workers who were working on the road.

We told them about the minor landfill a few hundred yards away and one of them promised to report it.

All the same, I said, once I got to my car, I’d drive back down and throw the garbage bag of recyling into my own boot, because if it was left lying there for much longer the crows or foxes would tear it open looking for food, and next thing you know the whole road’s covered in garbage.

So that’s what I did.

As we headed home, my friend told me about how, where she lived, you could literally tell what day of the week it was by the rubbish thrown out on the road.

On Sunday mornings, the roads would be littered with plastic bags containing plastic knives and forks and polystyrene plates decorated by the remains of curried chips or chilli chicken, or empty, smeared pizza boxes, because people were hungry after the pub and stopped off at the local takeaway. The hedgerows would also be garnished with the empty plastic bottles and cans from the cars of thirsty revellers driving home from the pub or nightclub.

Weekday mornings, you’d see the remains of the breakfast roll still in the polystyrene box. Lunchtimes bring the sandwich wrappers, the crisp bags and empty water bottles or paper coffee cups.

She knew a guy, she said, who was well known for his habit of stopping in laybys to take or make phone calls ( because around where she lives the signal can be dodgy).

People in the area were aware of this man’s fondness for specific kinds of chocolate bars and certain minerals because, apparently, once he’s finishes his phone call, he empties out all the wrappers and empty bottles that have accumulated in his car in recent days or weeks, and drives off, leaving a minor landfill in his wake.

Near somebody else’s house, of course.

Then there are the other problems. Traffic. Speeding.

The rural-dwellers who would once upon a time have taken it upon themselves – and I was one of them - to go out and pick up rubbish on their local roads are now afraid to do it.

The level of traffic on country roads – particularly the very significant number which have been turned into rat-runs – has increased enormously.

On top of that, drivers are travelling at much higher speeds than ever before. And, as we know, many of them don’t even bother to look at the road in front of them. Because they’re on their phones. Talking. Texting. Watching videos. And you don’t want to get in their way, believe me.

Meanwhile, of course, the number of outlets providing wrapped hot foods and beverages has increased, so the litter problem has increased exponentially.

And not only is it time-consuming and expensive to remove all these boxes and bags and other rubbish from an official point of view, residents who take a bit of pride in their environment are now afraid of going out to litter-pick in case some phone-watching moron will kill them.

So where do you start?

Fast food outlets? They’re the ones making all the money from the provision of on-the-go food.

They’re the ones whose food-wrappings – often with clearly branded logos – wave from our ditches and hedgerows like huge dirty flags.

Why not make the hot food providers pay a honking great levy?

Why not force them to provide lots of bins on their premises?

Why not make it mandatory to display large signs on their premises urging customers not to throw food-wrapping out the goddamn car window.

Seriously. I don’t know what the right answer is.

But we have to start somewhere.