Enough with the flimsy greenwashing, let's actually fund real environmental stuff

I was walking by the river last week and saw this huge pile of rubbish someone had just dumped. Plastic bottles, old tyres, bits of carpet – the lot. It’s depressing, isn’t it? You see these big government announcements about net zero and carbon targets, but then you look around your own town and it feels like nothing’s changing on the ground.

We need a proper, funded plan to clean up our local areas and protect our natural spaces. This means creating dedicated local environmental task forces, not just relying on volunteers. Give them actual budgets for equipment, waste removal, and importantly, enforcement. Fines for fly-tipping need to be significant enough to actually hurt, and there needs to be a clear mechanism for collecting them and reinvesting that money directly back into local environmental projects.