Walk along just about any road in the county and your eye will be drawn to the disappointing multi-coloured trail of litter strewn along the roadside verge, peppering ditches and fluttering from the bare winter hedges. My walk with the dog this morning generated a dispiriting list of detritus: soft drink cans and bottles, cigarette packets and a disposable vape, fast food packaging, a takeaway coffee cup still half full of gloopy liquid, chocolate wrappers and inevitably dog poo bags (both empty and full).

By all accounts we Brits are generally pretty proud of our country, we like living here and enjoy the society, culture and the countryside. And that’s why I find it so bizarre that a substantial proportion of the population seem to think it’s perfectly acceptable to lob their rubbish out of the car window as we drive along.

It’s not as if there is a shortage of bins – most villages and public places has got at least one, and every household has got a wheelie bin that the council empties once a fortnight. Those of us who grew up in the 1970s will remember the countryside code: “Always take your litter home”. Whilst there are penalties for littering, and someone was recently fined for dropping a cigarette butt in Ipswich, out in the countryside enforcement is almost impossible unless the culprit leaves cast-iron evidence and a case can be pressed.

Pride in our communities is what motivates many of us to attempt to turn the tide. In towns and villages across Suffolk, a disaggregated army of determined individuals is combatting the scourge of litter. Somewhere every weekend, clad in day-glo hi-vis for safety, a bin bag in one hand and a trusty-litter picker in the other, battle is commenced. And I’m happy to count myself among their number.

Despite our annoyance with the litter-chuckers,I have to admit there is something inherently satisfying about clearing a stretch of verge, or retrieving a varied collection of waste from a ditch. A little bit of pride in a job well done. My wife and I have “adopted” the few hundred yards between our home and the local shop, and we try to keep that relatively clear of rubbish. It can feel like a never-ending job – as soon as we clear the litter, new stuff starts to appear. But we feel as if we are gradually making some difference.

What about if we all did this? A very rough back-of-an-envelope calculation, dividing the length of roads in Suffolk by the population shows that we would only need to take responsibility for about 10m of road each to keep the county’s verges clear. Even if we narrowed that down by half to leave out the very young, very old and the infirm from the task, that’s still only 20m or road each. Where could you adopt?

Of course litter is only one annoying, visible manifestation of the broken relationship that humankind has with the planet on which we depend. Even if we do put our litter in the bin and the council empties it, what then? Suffolk’s efficient energy-from-waste plant at Great Blakenham incinerates our rubbish and produces electricity, but there are still end products that have to be dealt with: fly-ash once the rubbish has been burned (used for construction aggregate), and carbon dioxide that vents into the atmosphere. In the earth’s closed biosphere it all has to go somewhere. We talk about “throwing away” our rubbish, forgetting perhaps that there is no such place as “away”.

Whilst the consequences of rubbish disposal tend to be out of sight, out of mind, humankind’s overall impact on the planet is increasingly front and centre. Milder, wetter winters like the one we are currently experiencing are exactly what climate scientists have predicted as the earth warms. Global leaders have been aiming to limit the earth’s heating to only 1.5 degrees, but alarmingly that target now seems to be in the rear-view mirror rather than ahead of us.

The urgent need to reduce carbon emissions is becoming clearer by the day. Yet we still lack the clear direction from government about why this is important and how we could achieve it. With litter, a few individuals can get stuck in and make a difference. The challenge of holding back climate change will need all of us to step up.

Andy Mellen is leader of Mid Suffolk District Council