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Why do people drop litter?

by trwhite on 6/8/24, 8:55 PM with 16 comments

• by mattpallissard on 6/8/24, 9:51 PM

  > Most people will have been raised to understand littering is morally wrong

  I disagree with this. If you were raised to understand that littering was morally wrong, you are likely surrounded by folks that also understand that. On the converse, I never even _thought_ about littering growing up. Just tossing something was a thing I did. There wasn't a follow up thought at all. Not good, not bad, not "oh well someone will take care of it", literally no thought. It wasn't until I got a high school job that required picking up a lot of litter did it dawn on me that if you tossed something it still existed. At that point I stopped.

  But, even after that I would flick cigarette butts for nearly a decade. It randomly dawned on me one day, "oh, this is littering".

  There are vast swathes of the population that weren't raised being aware of littering. Depending on the area you grew up in you can probably still recall unsanctioned dumps on random properties in ditches and creek beds being normal. I can and I'm not even middle aged.

  With that in mind, at least in the US we have actually come a long way. Nowhere near solved yet, but _way_ different than how I grew up. It's 100% an education problem, much like smoking. Yeah, some people will still do it, but the numbers will continue to drop over time.

• by moribvndvs on 6/10/24, 4:12 PM

  I do a lot of walking and hiking, and I’ve taken to bringing a good sized stuff sack attached to my belt to just toss whatever trash I come across until I have no room. Might start bringing a trash grabber, too. Littering is extraordinarily offensive to me, but for too long I adopted a “I didn’t do it so I shouldn’t have to be the one that picks it up” attitude. I can either be impotently angry and indignant at the problem, which does nothing to solve it, or just put in a little extra effort and be a force of change. I implore everyone to do just a little bit to leave a place better than you found it. The culmination of a lot of small acts done consistently can have surprising results.

• by bradly on 6/8/24, 9:50 PM

  It seems a lot focused around cars which matches my experience as well. A few toughts on things that could help:

  - Cars need a small place for trash. Gum wrappers, receipts, things of that size. I would love to see this be a first class citizen in a car's interior similar to its cup holders.

  - I'd be interested to see if a drive-through public trash can would be effective is reducing the litter from cars described in the article. If people didn't have to get out of their cars similar to US mail drop boxes it could be enough to keep people from leaving their fast food trash on the street.

  - In Japan it is culturally unusually for you to eat while walking. Street food is expected to be eaten at the stall it is purchased at. Trash is then collected on the spot and as a result Japan has very few public trash cans, but virtually no litter with merchants responsible for the trash they create. Making food chains responsible for the refuse they create may help see change as well.

• by chmod775 on 6/8/24, 9:55 PM

  > In school you’re taught to take your litter home with you, or deposit it in the nearest public bin.

  In the place I went to school they drove home this lesson by picking a class each week that would then spend the next period picking up litter in and around the school grounds. Or rather, that was the lesson. Explicitly pointing out that littering is stupid and asocial would've been redundant at that point.

  Certainly it made people less likely to litter, since odds were they or the student next to them would be the ones picking it back up anyways. Nevertheless there was always enough litter to be picked up each week.

• by simonblack on 6/8/24, 9:43 PM

  A) They haven't been taught that it's anti-social to do so.

  B) The local infrastructure is such that there is no frequent servicing of a conveniently-placed trash receptacle.

  This morning while walking my dog, I saw a wide-spread large amount of trash surrounding our local bus-stop. That location would be the perfect place for a trash bin of some kind. But no, no bin. That means nowhere to put that trash (McDonalds*, as it turned out). So on the ground it was scattered.

  * Maybe McDonalds could sponsor a trash bin for us.

• by toymin on 6/8/24, 9:45 PM

  > Is someone more likely to drop litter if there’s already lots or less litter already around, I wonder?

  That's definitely a big factor, there's a whole theory on this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

  It seems like people are less likely to litter in clean places

• by WarOnPrivacy on 6/8/24, 11:53 PM

  After 2 decades in scouting, I had picked up a ton of trash. An actual ton.

  Military folks are similarly good citizens.

  The opposite of that are smokers.

• by drewcoo on 6/8/24, 9:59 PM

  Framing!

  Why does the author insist that not littering is the neutral state?

• by skilled on 6/8/24, 9:53 PM

  Don’t let the author visit Cambodia or Nepal, they’ll get a heart attack.

  When I was a kid I honestly didn’t care about dropping an empty bag of crisps on the street, or an empty can.

  I think a lot of people have experienced that. Then I grew up and developed a natural disgust for doing so. Some of it also thanks to my parents pointing out it’s a bad thing to do.

  Sounds like a good effort though. And people seeing you doing it will also affect them, even if they don’t say it outright. There are lots of such communities around the world. Great way to meet new people also.

• by whatever1 on 6/8/24, 9:39 PM

  Because in the UD there is no public trashcan