A small town in Austria has come up with a novel way to deter litter louts.
Anyone passing through Kirchham, a picturesque town of some 1,800 inhabitants in northern Austria, will encounter a series of giant yellow arrow signs lining the approach road.
The signs are not part of some avant garde modern art installation. Locals have erected them wherever they have found litter thrown from the windows of passing cars.
“We want to raise awareness — and be more aggressive about getting people’s attention,” Hans Kronberger, the town’s mayor, told Austria’s ORF radio.
“Every year we collect the rubbish, but people still throw their litter out of their car windows.” Residents say they regularly find drink cans, cigarette packets and food packaging along the verge.
There are a remarkable 300 arrows lining a 0.6 mile stretch of the road just outside Kirchham, each one marking a spot where litter was found.
“We didn’t have enough arrows. We needed 100 more,” Mr Kronberger said. Local authorities say they found a staggering 10,000 discarded Red Bull cans along local roads in the space of a year.
“Annually we gather 30 tonnes of trash on the district roadsides,” Alois Lanz, the head of road maintenance for the area, told Oberösterreichische Nachrichten newspaper.
It was not just a question of an unsightly approach to the town. Residents say the rubbish can have serious consequences for agriculture and the environment.
“Sharp plastic pieces, aluminium cans and glass fragments can get into livestock’s feed,” Hannes Gattinger, a vet, said. “The waste then enters the animals’ stomachs, causing severe cuts, which can result in the premature death or slaughter of the animal.”
The council said a single cigarette butt can pollute 50 litres (10 gallons) of groundwater.