Interview - Keep Britain tidy - Bill Bryson, president, Campaign to Protect Rural England

It's true that Bryson, a noted and much-loved American author and Anglophile, may not have quite the clout that's required to connect with streetwise young people - and he knows it."The hardest thing in the world is for older people to get through to young people," he says.

However, Bryson - whose passion for Britain in general and the countryside in particular is both evident and infectious - has given plenty of thought to getting the anti-litter message across to young people and teaching them why they should love rural areas as much as he does.

"The government needs to do something to encourage urban young people, such as school trips," he says. "Perhaps farm kids should come to the city and get an understanding of what it's like there and we could have exchanges between urban and rural schools. It would do both sides good to understand each other's issues and points of view."

But what about those who say young people are more likely to be the cause of littering than part of the solution?

"It isn't fair to just blame young people - I think litter is something that cuts across all class lines and age boundaries. But it's true that young people probably use a higher proportion of disposable packaging, from stuff like fast food."

He continues: "There is a general concern that young people don't have enough to do. But by having kids hanging out in the town square on a Saturday night, intimidating grannies and throwing litter, we are building a society in which they're led to believe that this is a normal way to behave and that it's acceptable."

"But we need to put out the message that it's not acceptable to be intimidating people, throwing litter and behaving antisocially. So what do we do with them? The starting point is to make it clear we don't tolerate this behaviour.

"Most of the kids who do this kind of thing know better," he adds. "Their mothers would be horrified if they knew what they were doing. But as a society we do need to give them alternative places to go and other things to do. And we need to give them jobs."

Anyone who has read The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bryson's account of his childhood in the state of Iowa, will be struck by the contrast between the hazy, halcyon days he portrays and the lives of young people in the UK in 2008.

"Life was easier when I was young," Bryson admits. "Young people now have to be more serious about their education. These days if you don't get good results all the way through school then you won't get into a good university. When I was a kid it was easier to be lucky and just fall into things - you didn't have to be quite so prepared."

"I'm not sure the way we do things now is necessarily any better," he adds. "I have a brilliant publisher who never went to university - he just started working when he was young and he worked hard and did very well. He would never have got that job nowadays because he would have had to have gone to a really good university and got good results to get a job in publishing.

"And that's the world young people are living in now - everything is a lot harder for them."

STOP THE DROP ANTI-LITTER AND FLY-TIPPING CAMPAIGN

- The Campaign to Protect Rural England has launched Stop the Drop, an initiative to crack down on littering and fly-tipping

- Among Bryson's suggestions is a scheme where customers pay a 10p deposit whenever they buy goods with recyclable packaging such as drinks cans

- The money is then refunded when the packaging is returned to be recycled

- Bryson says this would encourage other people, particularly young people, to pick up litter and return it to be recycled, with the added bonus of earning themselves some money in the process

- www.cpre.org.uk.