It's a tricky one. On the one hand you might agree that someone needs to take a stand. On the other you might think you'd be perceived as an interferring, intolerant, arrogant, high-and-mighty busy body with a superiority complex. And on yet another, you might well be met with abuse and, yes, in this day and age, even violence.

It seems to me that the "on the other hands" are in serious danger of outweighing the desire to be a good citizen.

But aren't you sick of the state of the paths, roads, verges, ditches, canals, drains and rivers? Or have you become so accustomed to all the rubbish you are shuffling ankle-deep through that you no longer notice?
Or care?

I am accustomed (though I never get used to the sight of it) to walking anywhere and everywhere – from busy city street to lonely country lane – with discarded detritus all about me.

I happen to live consume-and-drop distance from a drive-thru (sic) McDonald's. So a good portion of the colourful adornage tattering away in the hedges, verges and ditches is from Ronald's.

I have inwardly fumed when travellers in the street and on the roads have dropped their litter – crisp packet, sweet wrapper, cigarette end – without a thought, or any sense of wrongdoing or guilt.

They know not what they do. I firmly believe there are now three generations in this country who have no thought process when simply dropping where they stand, sit or lie the wrapper or packet they no longer have a use for. And that's because they have never been educated about the harm it can, will and does do.

What harm could one little sweet wrapper, one small crisp packet, one more dog end possibly do? The harm that millions upon millions of them thrown down in the open do.

According to figures from 2003 local councils in England spent more than £400 million on street cleaning. Local councils (and ultimately tax payers) also bear the financial burden of cleaning beach litter to the tune of around £14 million a year in England and Wales (Environment Agency, 2004).

Cigarette ends and chewing gum are now classed as litter. A Defra survey has shown a 27 per cent decrease in dog mess on England's streets but a 12 per cent rise in litter from takeaway food outlets while nearly 95 per cent of town centre streets are dotted with chewing gum.

Litter louts are costing you and me, and that's before we include the cost of clearing up fly tipping in the countryside. And it looks ugly. If they were helping themselves to cash out of your pocket, wallet or purse you'd soon have something to say about it.

Another symptom of Britain gone bad and doing nothing about it is graffiti and vandalism. Last week, when I came to work across the Purfleet footbridge, some idiot had thought it would be a good idea to add planking from the bridge to the rest of the rubbish floating in the fleet. The day after another plank had been pulled out, despite CCTV being directly overhead. Vandalism at its stupidly dangerous worst.

I have remonstrated in the past with litterbugs, and been met with threats of physical violence because, as you well know, I am well known for being an interferring, intolerant, arrogant, high-and-mighty busy body with a superiority complex. But an incident of vandalism against my personal property led me to my fresh resolution last week.

On Wednesday I spoke to a young man I saw spit up a wall in the street. He didn't slide a blade between my ribs. He said sorry and promised not to do it again.