LITTER on Barry’s beautiful beaches is again in the news.

Yet the Vale Council do a fantastic job in ensuring each morning the beach at Whitmore Bay is pristine clean.

Responses to litter on the beach are being met with calls for ‘litter police’, which would be the worst possible response. Inevitably, the soft easy targets get fined while rowdy, louts get away with it, while also sending out the entirely wrong message of a friendly, welcoming resort.

The responsibility instead lies with each and every one of us, to do the things we care about.

More and more personal civic action generates a knock-on effect – it’s what’s called our Social Capital. And we have a Social Capital crisis in the UK of less of us doing things for the common good.

Rather than more no litter signs we need to encourage people to pick up three items of litter wherever they see it – something I make a point of doing.

Regardless of any political persuasion we cannot rely on old models of assuming the state is the answer to do everything.

And there’s a bonus. You’ll find other dimensions of civic and community life start flourishing again as a consequence of small acts of civic goodness.

Could the litter be an opportunity to clean up our act as a community that co-operates and collaborates more to create a better world for ourselves?

Andy Green

Barry Island