As I make my daily hike up Kilimanjaro (also known as Richmond Hill) and arrive panting and sweating at the summit (also known as the surface car park), it strikes me, first how incredibly unfit I am, but secondly, how much litter there is on the pavements.

I’m not talking about crisp packets and drinks bottles (there aren’t too many of them, to be fair), I’m referring to the glut of cigarette butts and chewing gum quite literally covering some areas of the walkways.

I know, I know, this is a whinge that comes up time and again, but the problem is, the message doesn’t seem to be getting through.

With the smoking ban forcing all the Fag Ash Lils and Lees out onto the streets, butt litter is definitely getting worse, and, ironically, is probably indirectly affecting the gum litter too (smokers using quitting gum perhaps?) The disgusting habit of dropping these foul, saliva-soaked pieces of waste onto the street isn’t necessarily performed through malice, seeing as many simply believe it’s perfectly okay to drop cigarette butts onto the floor, stamp them out, and leave them there – it’s ingrained into the conscience of the smoker much like the urge to put the stinking cancer stick to the mouth in the first place, so they really don’t think of it as littering.

They are, of course, completely wrong.

All of which gets me thinking about China, a country where such habits would go completely unnoticed, not least because to them, spitting on the ground, wherever and whoever you are, male or female, is seen to be perfectly acceptable behaviour.

I kid you not, it happened once when we sat in a restaurant… Speaking of kids, another fairly foul string the Chinese have to their cultural bow is the lack of nappy-wearing in children.

Parents simply adorn their young offspring in pants or trousers with a hilarious-looking hole cut out by their bottoms, and when the time comes for the child to “go” (I haven’t the slightest idea how the parents get wind of this), they simply hold them over the road and the child defecates in the gutter.

Some parents clean this up, some do not.

No doubt some readers of this fascinating fact will be disgusted by what is a common occurrence over there, but I’m wondering if any of those are the type to drop butt or gum litter themselves…