The curse of the red rubber band

This is probably a familiar sight if you live in the UK. We see these discarded red rubber bands everywhere in towns. They are dumped by the people delivering the post. They make a mess and they are dangerous to wildlife and pets.

A report on the BBC Website yesterday revealed that the Royal Mail has spent over £5m on four billion bands over the past five years. That's an awful lot of rubber bands! According to the Royal Mail, postal workers always pick these up and hardly ever litter!

The pile of rubber bands in the left hand corner were picked up today on my very short walk around local streets at lunchtime. Most of the roads were rural but even there I found the dreaded red rubber bands. There were five in the car park at work alone.

I wish the post workers would take the bands back to the sorting office and use them again. Perhaps they should be prosecuted for littering?

I'm not sure what to do with my collection of about 20 bands. One anti-littering website suggests popping them back into a post box!

Keep Britain Tidy posted back a giant ball of them - over 13,000 - as part of its Big Tidy Up campaign in 2009.