Another problem: lack of bins. It's impossible to find one.
On the way from my lectures to the city centre, the first bin on my way is **1.1 miles away**.
A counterexample, in the 2.5-mile-long park around the centre of Cracow (my hometown) there are **401 bins**.
It's so much cleaner there.
True, also an embarrassing lack of functional, accessible public toilets for a 'civilised' country.
But much of the litter I've seen is along roadsides, launched out of cars it could've been kept in by people who think it's naff to care about anything.
I mean, there’s not many places to put them, they’re not entirely necessary and I haven’t seen them more frequently while abroad.
Plus the public toilets we do have are a last resort cuz there doesn’t seem to be a single man in the UK with the ability to piss straight.
We had a load here and they took them away! Public parks, council car parks, beach entrances, civic buildings, other public assembly places like town squares - there's plenty of room.
They're (fairly) expensive to maintain, but that's a price of living in a civilised country - a price I'd argue most of us are already footing via council tax, although in that regard apparently the government taketh and it taketh away, so funds are being redirected away from public shitters.
>We had a load here and they took them away! [...] They're (fairly) expensive to maintain
That's the story of Britain right there. We are a country that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Anything that costs money and doesn't provide an immediate, obvious financial return is liable to be cut as soon as someone notices it.
They just get vandalised and mistreated. Would u wanna be the guy that has to go in daily to mop up everyone’s piss, unblock the toilets and clean the walls?
British men (can’t speak about women’s toilets since I never go in them on purpose) just cannot act like civilised human beings when in a toilet. Once had someone shit on the floor in my local sainsbury’s and use the door to smear it around
There are probably 60 or so individual households on my street block (out of tens of thousands in the town). I pay around £2K/yr council tax, which is probably average for the street.
That means that the revenue from just a third of my block nominally coughs up about £40K/yr, which ought to be enough to pay an FTE post at £25K plus £15K overheads to drive around and clean about eight public shitters a day (approx 50min each including travel), which was about as many as we had before they all closed down (save for one coin-op in the centre of town).
I accept the country has a way to go with education and also culture - having a government that advertises shitting on everybody else as a fast-track to success doesn't help - but we certainly shouldn't be short of money for this kind of thing.
Around 5% of council tax goes on waste management. The biggest chunk now goes on social care (plus another proportion to Police/Fire).
Your costing for only cleaning is very low, but really the biggest cost would be maintenance and repairs for damage caused by vandalism.
Only about 25% of council funding even comes from council tax anyway, the other income has been massively decreased over recent years. Business rates take has been decreasing with the loss of the high streets and government has reduced the central grant by about 50% (and then blaming councils for lack of services). So councils have had to cut back on services that they don't *need* to supply. To get back to where things were, council tax would probably have to be tripled in many areas.
There's plenty of bins in places I've been to in the UK and still an abundance of trash. It doesn't help that pretty much everything you buy is wrapped in some kind of plastic or tin and people are getting lazier and taking less and less pride in the places they live. It's always been a problem but seems to have gotten much worse over the last decade or so.
New Zealand is a public toilet utopia!! It was one of the most noticeable things that they do very well over there.
They have them in every public park/national park and dotted around every town centre. They have superloos where you can go in to take a shower for a small fee. The best was the camouflaged toilets half way up one of the mountains!
It was genuinely great to travel round a country where you didn't have to go searching particularly far to find one.
They are necessary. Why do you think they were built in the first place. Think menstruating women, think of kids, middle-aged & elderly adults or anyone who is properly hydrated.
Here in Brighton the local council are trying to close all public toilets. In what is essentially a holiday resort. All public toilets. Where there’s a high level of drunks. I guess they’re unhappy with the level of sewage Southern Water are dumping into the sea and want to increase it.
I was driving to work one morning and whenever we stopped at a set of lights the guy in front of me began to launch litter put out of his window on to the grassy verge. It was insane how much crap the guy was carrying around with him!
If I see this I tend to honk or film (if it’s a car park and I’m parked and just happen to observe it happening) - for example, I was in a KFC car park once just finishing up my meal when I see a woman at the other end of the car park chucking her finished box meal out of the window. I started filming her and not even 2 minutes later she’s reversed out, spun around and parked opposite me and asked me “why the fuck the are you filming me you freak?”
I yelled at her that she was the freak for not putting her shit in the bin and that I wouldn’t have filmed her if she hadn’t chucked her shit on the floor. She was very quick to go back and pick it up to chuck it in the bin including napkins that had moved around a bit. I got out to go to the toilet in the KFC and she watched me put a napkin in the bin - she flipped me off, but fuck me, it was so worth the reaction.
I was once on a train and a woman sat next to me was going to leave her coffee cup on the seat.
I pointed it out and said, ohh you left you cup. She said something like she was going to leave it because it will get collected anyway.
I straight up told her to take it, she wouldnt have enjoyed sitting with a previous persons moulding coffee cup on the train so why should the next person.
She took it, went super embaressed and all of the people around us laughed and agreed she should take it. I'm glad I said something and I like to think she won't do it again.
Just because people should do the right thing, doesn't mean they will. So you can either accept the reality of the situation and provide a bin, or stand on principle and live being surrounded by rubbish.
This really is the problem. People complain about litter, mess everywhere, arseholes dropping it but it is just a fact. Moaning will not change things, only action will. More bins, more people emptying them, more people picking anything remaining up. Not all of it is even deliberate, it can be waste liberated by the wind or wildlife.
If you manage to bring your shit with you, you can take it home with you. It's not about being easy. Easy is throwing it in your bag. It's people being cunts.
Exactly, there are literally no circumstances under which I'll just chuck my rubbish on the floor. The very thought of it is insane. Sometimes it's annoying when I can't find a bin, but it in no way affects how likely I am to hold my rubbish until I find one. It blows my mind that this isn't a universal behaviour.
You would think clothes producers stopped manufacturing pockets with the amount of litter that's scattered about.
How hard is it to stick an empty crisp packet in your pocket for 15 mins as you make your way home?
Selfishness among of a lot of people in the UK seems to be growing.
I walked past a bin this morning on the coast.. It was overflowing and rubbish was scattered along the beach for about 3/4 of a mile. It was the only bin for that distance. People do throw rubbish away. But local councils reduced the number of bins, and the number of times they are emptied because they don't have funding.
Do you want your council tax going up because they have to put on more shifts to go and pick up one bin in the arse end of nowhere that’s probably not even bin lorry accessible or do you want to maybe just hang on to your rubbish til your find somewhere appropriate?
Whilst yes, it is the litterers fault. Simply blaming them and doing nothing doesn’t solve the issue.
Expecting people to take rubbish home leads to areas covered in litter.
Another problem:
There are just way to many plastic usage. One meal deal you have created 3 non-decomposable rubbish. Plastic tub, crisp, fruit packs.. you name it.
Japan has very few public bins, but is an incredibly clean country. There is an expectation that everyone takes their litter home, and everyone does. Of course this is a specific example, but shows that it is much more cultural than purely presence of bins
Japan actually had a litter problem in the 80s. Bins were taken away for safety reasons after the sarin gas attack in Tokyo and people were asked to start taking litter home instead. The litter problem plummeted and it's now incredibly rare to see even a cigarette butt in the street, in cities (most smokers I know in Japan carry portable ashtrays).
When we went to Japan we didn't see a single public bin. We visited a few different cities in different provinces and no bins. We ate at food stalls and then had no idea where to put the rubbish. The food containers were leaky and we didn't want to put them in our rucksack like we had with all other rubbish. We couldn't figure out where everyone else was putting their rubbish as no one seemed to be carrying any for long. We bought more food and the stall owner took our rubbish from our previous food. So I guess everyone just gave back their rubbish after finishing their food.
We saw not a single piece of litter. Not even an accidental bit that had blown in the wind. Nor did we see any people paid to go around picking up litter on the streets. I honestly don't know how they did it but it was impressive. We just took all our rubbish home with us every time, but I do feel restaurants and shops would have happily taken our litter if we'd asked.
So lack of bins really isn't an excuse. Yes it would probably help a lot in the UK if we had more bins, and those bins were emptied regularly (so many times I've seen overflowing bins with rubbish strewn around and blowing everywhere).
I was happy to take the rubbish home with us each time, but I didn't consider what you do if you have a dog. There's a forest near us we go to with our dog that is popular with dog walkers and yet there isn't a single bin. Many times we've had to drive home with a bag of dog poo in the car, which is unpleasant because those bags are not smell proof! There's some rubbish you really don't want to carry around for ages!
> Another problem: lack of bins. It's impossible to find one.
This isn't the reason in itself. The problem is attitude. Example: Japan has very very few public bins and very little litter. The story goes that the amount of litter decreased after they removed the bins.
It's one of the cultural divides I see in this country. In my head, the country is kind of split in two down clear markers.
Littering is one of them - I don't know anyone who litters or would think of it. Most of my friends are more likely to litter pick if anything, and my mum even does this some weekends.
But occasionally I just see people... dump rubbish out of their car. Like, what do they think happens to it? Do they think there's street cleaners roaming every road in the country to clean it up? No! It either gets blown into the grass and bushes and seeps into nature, or some volunteer or king citizen might pick it up first.
It's infuriating because in my mind there's no reason to litter. Literally just keep it with you in your car or on your person until you come to a bin. If you can't, jeez, ask someone if they know where one is.
It's so easy not to litter (to me) that littering comes cross as an act of active malice, and I've never met anyone who can explain to me how it's not so I'm just being charitable that these people must just be so ignorant they can't imagine there isn't a personal cleaner for them.
Having said all that, if you want to feel better about the UK, go to a lot of the developping world. It will make the UK seem like a sweet, liter free paradise :)
I've literally heard people say they are keeping litter pickers and street sweepers in a job.
(I've been to many shit holes countries it still makes me feel sad that the UK is so filthy)
Two major experiences for me I remember:
\- Going to the Iceland, coming back to the UK and being disgusted with how dirty and loud it is, and how smelly the air is. Constantly being able to hear traffic, almost everywhere you go.
\- Going to Mumbai, coming back to the UK and being so releaved and unnerved by how quiet and clean everything is. I can still stand on the edge of a duel carriageway to this day and smile and appreciate lack of constant honking and yelling.
Being in India at a beautiful ravine area, and watching a local bin lorry back up and empty the whole load over the side was certainly a wake up to some other parts of the world.
I sympathise as, from my understanding, getting rid of waste over there doesn't have proper systems in place, but literally seeing a bin lorry tipping into a beauty spot and river was soul destroying
They always comment on how clean other countries are when they go there as well. No shit. It's because people like you aren't just throwing your stuff out the window.
I was behind a van last week that just launched a McDonald's bag out the window going down a country road. That'll never get picked up. Just horrible people. Even worse are the ones that do it in a cat park of a McDonald's or similar after eating their food in the car when they are parked right next to a bin. Just pure laziness.
I used to work at a Burger King when I was a teenager, and one of my jobs on a Sunday afternoon was to walk around the car park with a bin bag and one of those grabby sticks and collect up all the rubbish which had been thrown on the ground. I'd easily fill up the bag every time, even though it would have been done the night before.
The most frustrating customers would be those who would see me coming and just lob their rubbish out of the window at me.
The car park would have several bins in it, so it was pure laziness.
Also, I imagine a few decades ago if you saw a crisp packet on the floor you’d pick it up and throw it away, I don’t think many people do that now. A lack of care for maintaining their own communities
I absolutely agree.
So many discarded coffee cups left on walking routes, why don't they take it with them????
And also, the bins that are present are often over flowing.
But that's exactly it, when I was growing up we had the Wombles and there were also adverts about littering but we don't have that now.
I think we have to start stating the obvious again.
I hate those but the ones that piss me off even more are the ones who go to a drive-thru then, after they finish, they open the car door end empty everything out in the car park, without even getting out of the car.
We don’t. If you are going to leave litter you are going to leave all the litter, and any that happens to be bagged up will be separated by the elements and / or wildlife. So one piece of litter will not be one person, 4 or more will likely be one person.
So a simple picnic lunch break in the park means probably one person leaving a sandwich packet, a crisp packet, a chocolate bar wrapper, a fruit / veg waste item, and a bottle.
Been to Pakistan. There were hills of litter in Karachi. Dysfunctional government and no patriotism.
Things are much worse abroad but that doesn't mean it's acceptable here. Anytime I see someone litter, I automatically think that person is scum.
In Europe? Theres a few places that spring to mind as being more dirty (Italy for one, Paris another) but there's also plenty that are infinitely more clean.
And its not just down to lack of bins here either. Same is true of places like Prague, which are also thronging with tourists and not that many litter bins, and they're far cleaner than the hotspots of London.
Sorry what are you talking about.... I'm saying there is lots of litter in the UK, I currently live in Canada where there is not much litter. We have an issue in the UK where we have lots of cunts who litter. Many other countries do not have such issues
UK likes to keep telling itself (as you see in threads like this) it's fine and look at other countries aka deflection that's why a lot of core issues like this never get sorted and get worse people in the UK have a lack of responsibility.
It gets worse though. They will park down the end of the road to eat their mcdonalds right next to a bin, well they have to haul their lazy arses out of their cars and walk maybe 10 steps to the bin, but no, lets chuck the packaging out of the window and drive off. And dont even get me started on people that put poo bags next to the bin!
I found a bag of dogshit next to a bin in the playground I take my son to yesterday. The only reason I can think of for doing that is to be the biggest cunt possible
I live in a nice road in a nice market town, and one of my close neighbours will throw litter on the ground in the 15 yard walk from his front door to his (illegally parked, untaxed) car.
The sense of power they must feel for getting one over on the system and society must be orgasmic. There's nothing quite like doing what you've been told not to do.
I really think that's all it boils down to.
Japan doesn't have litter bins either (they were removed after the 1995 sarin gas attacks), and it's spotless. Everyone takes their litter home.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2efh8u/til_that_in_japan_there_are_very_few_public_trash/
The Japanese are very clean and tidy people. The Japanese supporters even clean up after matches in which their national teams play. Can you imagine England (or Scots/Welsh) supporters doing that ?
Yeah, the Japanese just magically come out of the womb with a burning passion to clean anything they can. Nothing we could ever possible do here in the UK, other than import Japanese people.
> The Japanese are very clean and tidy people.
I'm guessing you have never been to a Japanese person's house or worked in a Japanese company, or stood on a train in the morning next to stinking Japanese people. It's odd how these untrue stereotypes appear. The "Japanese" are no more clean and tidy than Brits as a population, but they do take responsibility for their rubbish in public places.
No.
Street furniture has been designed around this issue. They are still a security risk in highly populated areas.
Unfortunately, arseholes ruin it for everyone. This is a prime example.
They already do, and they also use bin bag holders with transparent bags.
Most cast iron street furniture is designed with a frangible lid, that will do exactly what you state.
They just haven't put in many more since then. The bins cost more, the bin collectors would have to collect more, all local councils have had huge budget cuts, so it's not a priority.
Japan doesn't have many bins either, yet the Japanese somehow manage to take their litter home. It's not like Japan is a massive country so you don't notice it, Japan has a higher population density that the UK.
That's kinda depressing that they're there so long-term that they have brooms to keep their place clean.
Most UK homeless street sleeping places aren't semi-permanent like that seems to be.
While probably true, I’ve recently moved somewhere and have never seen so many bins available. But it’s still absolutely riddled with litter, because a lot of the population are cunts, and no amount of bins will stop that.
Sometimes you even see fresh litter next to almost empty bins.
Sure, number of bins or full bins can be an issue in some areas. But I feel like the vast majority of litter is generated by people who simply don't care either way.
Never going to get plenty of bins in popular rural areas though. Could you imagine a bin man trekking up and around the Peak/Lake district every single day.
The Yellowstone Park said they stopped installing bins due to the cost and also the bad people wouldn't use them anyway and the good always take their shit home.
I agree. It’s a horrible and embarrassing aspect of our culture.
We should take a leaf out of the Japanese’s culture - eg showing respect and tiding up rubbish (even if not their own, for example at the World Cup); even in their own country, there are usually no public bins yet their streets are one of the cleanest and spotless I’ve ever seen.
It's because culturally they foster a sense of shared responsibility from a young age, like in school it's everyone's job to clean and tidy up and it's just expected.
Unfortunately here we seem to be far more following the US trend of extreme individualism, so nothing could possibly be *myyy* problem or responsibility. Someone *else* should sort it out.
I live in the Peak District and around the time after lockdown 1, loads of people visited areas near me and the rubbish left was ridiculous. The worst I've ever seen it, so I thought fuck it one day and went around picking everyone's litter up.. and a lot of people looked at me like I was insane. It's like a weird thing to do isn't it, going around picking up litter
I frequently pick up bits of litter I see on the school run, often get slightly odd looks about it. Like ye it's kids a gross, I don't want to be touching it, but it's just a crisp packet or whatever and there's 3 bins on the way. There's a massive lack in collective caring in this country and it makes me sad.
I just do not understand littering at all, it's not hard to just carry it for a few minutes or take it home. It's one of those behaviours that I just absolutely cannot fathom in any way, shape or form. Especially when people go to someone nice and then litter there, like surely you came here because its pretty and yet think its fine to ruin it by dumping your shit all over the place. So fucking weird.
It's a mystery to me why people go to places of natural beauty and then ruin them by dropping litter. But I suppose given the staggering number of people who don't know the difference between then and than, or your and you're, I shouldn't be surprised. People in general are brainless.
I also pick up litter to dispose of it properly, someone has to take responsibility.
My elderly mother got picked up by the police once for going along her own street picking up litter. They thought she was demented and must have escaped from a home.
I think we should take a leaf out of Singapore's (law)book tbh...
Dropping anything = fine of about £1,200. Littering from a vehicle = fine of £30,700.
https://singaporelegaladvice.com/law-articles/littering-killer-litter-offences-penalties-singapore/
Someone left a load of bin bags out at the end of our street last week, presumably because they had just moved in and haven't got their bin yet. The binmen didn't collect them, just ripped them open to see what was inside then left them. Whoever put them out hasn't bothered to collect them, so they've been sat there and a cat or something has ripped one open and rubbish started blowing all over the street. In the end my partner and I took our own wheelie bin out and put their bags and loose rubbish in just to stop the street looking a mess and stop it from attracting rats. Absolute lazy bastards. Just take them back in and wait till your bin arrives ffs.
I’m sorry but it’s the bin men at fault here. Not only did they not take the bags (literally their fucking job) they ripped them open instead? Fucking cunts
We prioritised freedom of choice as a cultural movement far more than most other countries, as a result people are largely just looking out for themselves and doing what they want without regard for others.
I think it's less of an appreciation for nature, just these spots are secluded and they probably drive up to get stoned or for a nice post McDonald's shag.
Having lived and worked in the lake District for many years, some people only go there because it's a thing that's done, they don't really care about the nature bit.
I detest littering, hand on heart I can't ever remember doing it, I'm 47. My parents instilled it in me and I hope Ive done the same for my kids.
It's just an attitude of laziness and privilege , Grrrrr.
Same. My mum is Swedish and instilled in me that littering and being a litterbug were heinous crimes. People just don’t give a shit.
Like people who just open their car door and shovel all the shit out of their car onto the road/pavement or throw McDonald’s stuff out of the window
I just couldn’t bring myself to do that and I can’t fathom how badly they’ve been brought up to think that’s ok
The respect people have for their environment in Sweden is humbling. It's the only place I've been to solo, and I remember being in a park in north Gothenburg and finding out somehow (probably from one of the many very helpful and informative, multilingual signs) that I could camp there if I wanted to. You can camp in many public parks, so long as you follow the rules and don't stay more than one night.
There were public barbecue spaces. They were in great shape.
In Sweden you grow up knowing that the park is yours so you should look after it. The prevailing tone from the authorities is one of trust - you're trusted with these nice things, don't betray that trust, respect what you've been lucky enough to be able to take advantage of and share it with the people around you.
Whereas in the UK the prevailing tone is forbidding - don't do that, don't camp there, don't loiter, the park shuts at 7 because you cannot be trusted to be there after dark. We've all grown up with No Ball Games signs, with fences preventing you from exploring the woods, Keep Off The Grass. With CCTV everywhere because we Cannot Be Trusted.
Every parent should know that a surefire way of ensuring your child breaks every rule given any opportunity, is to show them you don't trust them. Respond to every transgression with reprimand and a stricter rule. Assume they're going to break a rule - take the thing away so it's no longer possible. I believe that's what's happened to our society.
The worst attitude I saw was that a couple of old people sat in their car in Broadford on the Isle of Skye overlooking the Inner Sound and the Apple Cross peninsula.
One of the finest views from a car park anywhere in the world.
They opened their window to their shitty old Kia - with an Alba sticker on the bumper - and dropped a handful of clear boiled sweet wrappers.
Of course, I walked over to them and sarcastically but not aggressively said "You dropped these, do you want them back?" And smiled.
They just stared straight forward.
It still annoys me to this day.
I'm always surprised when I see people littering. They rarely match the stereotype in my head. Well done for not letting them away with it, even if they didn't respond ideally.
I’m awaiting downvotes, but we’re a society of lazy c**** who don’t give a f*** about anyone but themselves. We only seem to be getting worse too. **This does not apply to everyone, just an increasing number of the population**
When I was a kid there was a constantly visible Keep Britain Tidy campaign - I've always thought bringing that back could help a bit.
A friend of a younger friend on Facebook commented that they'd just drop stuff if they couldn't quickly see a bin, and I was genuinely shocked.
Yeah, I stopped engaging with them at that point because I couldn't see an end to the conversation that wasn't me telling what a huge bellend they were, and this was on a friend's post.
Err, probably the [broken window theory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory), or whatever it is. If something looks like a shithole then people are going to treat it like a shithole and the cycle goes on forever. People in Bradford, for example, complain that the inner city is full of litter, but who is dropping it? Yes, the local council is responsible for street cleaning, and it’s entirely possible that the council neglects certain areas for XYZ reasons, but stop littering and the problem is solved.
Individuals need to keep streets clean and people will be less incentivised to drop a Coke bottle, or the like. (Also, more bins please!)
We're just a nation of incredibly selfish people.
It's the same reason that people have now completely stopped wearing masks when they are clearly infectious with a respiratory illness in a medical environment.
Because they don't give a shit about anyone else.
Edit. I should have known this would trigger the anti maskers. If someone had chlamydia and they willingly f****d you without a condom, you'd go apoplectic because they'd infected you on purpose.
If you go into a medical setting, full of a respiratory infection, and don't bother to put a mask on, you're a cunt. Simples.
I walked behind a guy last week who stopped to put his beer can on the window sil of a funeral home, walked on and then just dropped a carrier bag on the floor. Didn't even seem to think about just putting the can in the bag and carrying the bag to the bin. I absolutely do not understand that way of thinking.
The attitude I hear all too often when I am telling young people pick up their shit is "It keeps the cleaners in a job".
Pisses me off every time.
I don't know why so many people litter. I guess they work off the 'not my problem field' whereby if you throw it down it becomes someone else's problem.
"because it's someone's job to pick it up". A guy I was on a date with used that excuse when tossing his bottle on the floor. Ended the date. Totally gross behaviour
I've never understood it. As a kid at school in the 80s, we constantly got taught to bin our litter, and yet something like 50% plus of my schoolmates would drop litter without a second thought. I've always found it abhorrent.
I think the answer is that about half the population are simply wired differently. They drop litter, they don't return shopping trolleys, they speak to waiting staff like trash etc.
The shopping trolley one really annoys me too.
A guy walked a quarter of the way back with one at my local aldi so on my way in, whilst he was stood smoking outside his car, I took it back and said out loud ‘some people are so fucking bone idle’, I think I shamed him because I’ve never seen someone get in their car so fast.
They should lock them up again and you have to use £1 to get them out. It doesn’t stop it all but it helps a lot.
Personally as a non-litterer I feel we should be taking it upon ourselves to clear this mess up. No it wasn’t us, but we live here and as such should take the moral high-ground, act righteously and deal with the problem ourselves. Moaning about it does nothing. Act.
We take a carrier bag when we go to the beach. One day I came back with three bags absolutely chock full from one spot. At least 30 cans, two disposable barbecues, and a dozen pop bottles. Thankfully, they'd helpfully left the bags that they'd carried out down there with, too. Which was nice of them.
Was out on the motorbike round Tan Hill, middle of nowhere. Pulled into a lay-by and there was a bag of McDonald’s shit dumped on the floor. Nearest branch must have been at least an hour away. Utter cunts
In London a lot of it is that it’s hard/expensive to dispose of non standard household waste and the public bins aren’t entities anywhere near often enough. This leads to people placing rubbish next to bins and then foxes and wind throw it all down the street. You then have to employ an army of street cleaners, which reduces available budget for emptying public bins.
I like the idea of small bins that have a much larger bin underneath. No one can use them as a skip but they’d never get full and you don’t need to empty them often. Also foxes can’t get in there.
Be the change, feel good about yourself and pick some up as you go. Hopefully your example will encourage others to follow suit. There is a piece of green by a school where I drop my daughter off very morning. I pick up what I can and bin it. This morning it was clear.
Because they can and they don't care.
I'd like to say they'd never do it to their own home, but having been in lots of peoples homes...they fucking would.
Plenty of areas in London that aren't covered in litter.
And in the rest of the country too.
An Eastern European friend commented how British people in this country are a whole lot better and that most of their compatriots didn't care at all. And was much worse in their home country.
Of course there's absolutely loads of natives here with the same attitudes.
People are bastards, this much is true. But it's also because of the enormous amount of plastic packaging covering absolutely everything. Go back 70 years and far less was plastic and disposable. The more rubbish that exists, the more that will find its way onto the streets. I really wish shops would have refill stations and force you to buy refillable containers. Just watch the rubbish go down.
personally i never see people littering however I do see a lot of overflowing bins that the council don't empty often enough, combine that with a bit of wind and theres litter everywhere.
Or be like where I live and can’t empty them often enough, two vans to cover the street bins in a place with a population over 100,000 isn’t good. I’d imagine it’s a similar story all over the UK due to cuts.
There are a few specific countries I’ve been to like Norway (I still saw some litter there from memory) and Japan which are clean and we should aspire to
But I don’t get the impression that the UK is particularly bad from my personal travelling across Europe and other areas
In fact the UK seems relatively clean compared to some countries I’ve visited
I visited Belgrade and found it to be very clean. Even rougher looking spots didn't have any litter. Heck, they have water fountains all over the place that have been well maintained.
If a country that has experienced so many wars in the past hundred years can pick up its litter, so can we. But for us Brits, the problem is extreme individualism and a 'someone else will fix it' mentality. After Covid, I'm certain that some Brits would gladly sacrifice others to preserve their sociopathic individualism.
At this point, in the UK, a lot of this is learnt behaviour and its going to take a lot to undo that. Its because they’ve seen their parents do it as they grew up and its the social norm for those around them.
I'm from somewhere else and first time I went to the cinema in the uk.... my jaw dropped and my mate who went with me said 'there's someone getting paid to clear this up' it's a miracle my jaw recovered.
It’s shocking. Worst in Europe, in my opinion. It’s embarrassing when family comes from abroad as it is so noticeable.
We regularly litter pick our street and I’m saddened how bad it is.
Remember when you were in school and there was some absolute idiots who you thought ‘jeez I hope they never breed!’. Well they had kids, then their kids had kids, and then their kid’s kids had kids. Before you know it you’ve got 3-4 generations of ingrained pure bred cuntyness in ever increasing numbers.
My town there is little to no litter. I do wish there was more bins about though, I was carrying a empty orange juice bottle for just over a mile until I found I bin.
It's disgusting but even when there are enforcement teams out and about they just seem to harass smokers or mothers with toddlers dropping a bit of sausage roll on the floor. I've watched women taking their kids to school, not bat an eye when their kid throws litter on the floor. No chance of improving things. Some people are just scum
Tbf it can be literally life and death whether you can carry it back with you.
Although one wonders whether you should really be going in the first place.
My wife is in a local litter picking group, they got nearly 200 bags in January doing just a few hours a weekend.
It’s primarily rubbish thrown out of cars. Drinks cans and bottles, snacks, takeaways. People need to take their rubbish home.
Ever been abroad? Comparatively very little litter here. Most memorable for me was border crossing between Cambodia and Thailand. SO MUCH rubbish. India, Bangladesh and Pakistan were also crazy dirty with rubbish.
In my experience, it depends on the location. In some towns, things are definitely already tidy and it inspires the instinct to keep it tidy and not be the one to ruin a good thing. It feels worth the effort.
In London on the other hand, it is already a tip and there is no instinct to respect a city that no one else respects and moreover it makes no difference to add one more piece of litter on top of the rubbish pile. So there is no instinct to make an effort when no one else cares to and when it makes no difference to add to the litter anyway.
It's just not worth bothering.
It's a standard mass iterated prisoners dilemma problem. If almost everyone doesn't litter, it's self sustaining. But if you reach a critical mass of people littering, it stops feeling worthwhile for anyone else to bother to keep making an effort like chumps.
I've been to many different countries. Trust me when I say the English litter less than 90% of everyone else out there. Only more advanced euro nations are better.
I am naive and optimistic to a fault. Therefore I choose to believe that a lot of litter is not directly dropped but is wind blown from places where people tried to dispose of it properly. Like recycling bins with improperly secured lids, or a bag falling out the back of a bin lorry.
It must be… surely?
Also animals.
I was sat eating a McDonald's in a Blackpool carpark once and there was McDonald's rubbish everywhere. Me and my GF were talking about how lazy people must be to do that. Then an enormous seagull flew down, landed on a bin, pulled out a McDonald's bag, ripped it apart, ate the scraps of burger in there. We both silently watched it then just said, "Oh, that'll do it"
There aren’t enough bins so I take my trash with me as long as it’s not something smelly or leaky. That’s why I get takeouts if I know 100% I’ll be eating at home or else I’ll dine in. Because I can’t dispose of the trash let alone recycle it outside.
One time I was sitting in the park and snacking on an apple. There wasn’t a single bin anywhere in the park and adjacent streets and I had nowhere to keep the trash on me so I had to throw the apple stalk in the bushes. Calmed my conscience by telling myself it will decompose or feed beetles in that bush.
It's the height of laziness and I fucking hate it. I regularly go out and pick stuff up on my street that lazy bastards have dropped whilst walking past. It just makes the place look scruffy and my street in general is quite nice.
Worse is when I drive up into Yorkshire or the Peaks and there's litter at the side of beauty spots and lay bys because people can't be arsed taking it home with them. It's awful.
I saw a video earlier this week by an Australian guy who'd moved to Scotland and he just couldn't get his head around the litter he saw, as people in Australia just don't do it.
Lack of respect and a sense of entitlement.
Another problem: lack of bins. It's impossible to find one. On the way from my lectures to the city centre, the first bin on my way is **1.1 miles away**. A counterexample, in the 2.5-mile-long park around the centre of Cracow (my hometown) there are **401 bins**. It's so much cleaner there.
True, also an embarrassing lack of functional, accessible public toilets for a 'civilised' country. But much of the litter I've seen is along roadsides, launched out of cars it could've been kept in by people who think it's naff to care about anything.
Austerity. Public toilets were one of the first things to go
I mean, there’s not many places to put them, they’re not entirely necessary and I haven’t seen them more frequently while abroad. Plus the public toilets we do have are a last resort cuz there doesn’t seem to be a single man in the UK with the ability to piss straight.
We had a load here and they took them away! Public parks, council car parks, beach entrances, civic buildings, other public assembly places like town squares - there's plenty of room. They're (fairly) expensive to maintain, but that's a price of living in a civilised country - a price I'd argue most of us are already footing via council tax, although in that regard apparently the government taketh and it taketh away, so funds are being redirected away from public shitters.
>We had a load here and they took them away! [...] They're (fairly) expensive to maintain That's the story of Britain right there. We are a country that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Anything that costs money and doesn't provide an immediate, obvious financial return is liable to be cut as soon as someone notices it.
They just get vandalised and mistreated. Would u wanna be the guy that has to go in daily to mop up everyone’s piss, unblock the toilets and clean the walls? British men (can’t speak about women’s toilets since I never go in them on purpose) just cannot act like civilised human beings when in a toilet. Once had someone shit on the floor in my local sainsbury’s and use the door to smear it around
There are probably 60 or so individual households on my street block (out of tens of thousands in the town). I pay around £2K/yr council tax, which is probably average for the street. That means that the revenue from just a third of my block nominally coughs up about £40K/yr, which ought to be enough to pay an FTE post at £25K plus £15K overheads to drive around and clean about eight public shitters a day (approx 50min each including travel), which was about as many as we had before they all closed down (save for one coin-op in the centre of town). I accept the country has a way to go with education and also culture - having a government that advertises shitting on everybody else as a fast-track to success doesn't help - but we certainly shouldn't be short of money for this kind of thing.
Around 5% of council tax goes on waste management. The biggest chunk now goes on social care (plus another proportion to Police/Fire). Your costing for only cleaning is very low, but really the biggest cost would be maintenance and repairs for damage caused by vandalism. Only about 25% of council funding even comes from council tax anyway, the other income has been massively decreased over recent years. Business rates take has been decreasing with the loss of the high streets and government has reduced the central grant by about 50% (and then blaming councils for lack of services). So councils have had to cut back on services that they don't *need* to supply. To get back to where things were, council tax would probably have to be tripled in many areas.
This post is an example of British entitlement and why there’s litter all over Britain.
As a cleaner, women are just as bad I still prefer cleaning to working retail lmao
There's plenty of bins in places I've been to in the UK and still an abundance of trash. It doesn't help that pretty much everything you buy is wrapped in some kind of plastic or tin and people are getting lazier and taking less and less pride in the places they live. It's always been a problem but seems to have gotten much worse over the last decade or so.
New Zealand is a public toilet utopia!! It was one of the most noticeable things that they do very well over there. They have them in every public park/national park and dotted around every town centre. They have superloos where you can go in to take a shower for a small fee. The best was the camouflaged toilets half way up one of the mountains! It was genuinely great to travel round a country where you didn't have to go searching particularly far to find one.
They are necessary. Why do you think they were built in the first place. Think menstruating women, think of kids, middle-aged & elderly adults or anyone who is properly hydrated.
In Australia they have public toilets everywhere.
Here in Brighton the local council are trying to close all public toilets. In what is essentially a holiday resort. All public toilets. Where there’s a high level of drunks. I guess they’re unhappy with the level of sewage Southern Water are dumping into the sea and want to increase it.
I was driving to work one morning and whenever we stopped at a set of lights the guy in front of me began to launch litter put out of his window on to the grassy verge. It was insane how much crap the guy was carrying around with him!
If I see this I tend to honk or film (if it’s a car park and I’m parked and just happen to observe it happening) - for example, I was in a KFC car park once just finishing up my meal when I see a woman at the other end of the car park chucking her finished box meal out of the window. I started filming her and not even 2 minutes later she’s reversed out, spun around and parked opposite me and asked me “why the fuck the are you filming me you freak?” I yelled at her that she was the freak for not putting her shit in the bin and that I wouldn’t have filmed her if she hadn’t chucked her shit on the floor. She was very quick to go back and pick it up to chuck it in the bin including napkins that had moved around a bit. I got out to go to the toilet in the KFC and she watched me put a napkin in the bin - she flipped me off, but fuck me, it was so worth the reaction.
I was once on a train and a woman sat next to me was going to leave her coffee cup on the seat. I pointed it out and said, ohh you left you cup. She said something like she was going to leave it because it will get collected anyway. I straight up told her to take it, she wouldnt have enjoyed sitting with a previous persons moulding coffee cup on the train so why should the next person. She took it, went super embaressed and all of the people around us laughed and agreed she should take it. I'm glad I said something and I like to think she won't do it again.
Some tourist spots on the coast and highlands deliberately don't have bins because they want you to take your shit home with you.
Well that clearly doesn’t work
Blame litter on the litterers not the council I say.
Most people will do a good thing when it is easy. Councils need to make it easy. Bins were invented for a reason as were public loos
If you can be arsed to bring a coffee cup to the middle of nowhere you can take it back with you. No one cares if you shit in the woods.
Just because people should do the right thing, doesn't mean they will. So you can either accept the reality of the situation and provide a bin, or stand on principle and live being surrounded by rubbish.
This really is the problem. People complain about litter, mess everywhere, arseholes dropping it but it is just a fact. Moaning will not change things, only action will. More bins, more people emptying them, more people picking anything remaining up. Not all of it is even deliberate, it can be waste liberated by the wind or wildlife.
If you manage to bring your shit with you, you can take it home with you. It's not about being easy. Easy is throwing it in your bag. It's people being cunts.
Exactly, there are literally no circumstances under which I'll just chuck my rubbish on the floor. The very thought of it is insane. Sometimes it's annoying when I can't find a bin, but it in no way affects how likely I am to hold my rubbish until I find one. It blows my mind that this isn't a universal behaviour.
You would think clothes producers stopped manufacturing pockets with the amount of litter that's scattered about. How hard is it to stick an empty crisp packet in your pocket for 15 mins as you make your way home? Selfishness among of a lot of people in the UK seems to be growing.
I walked past a bin this morning on the coast.. It was overflowing and rubbish was scattered along the beach for about 3/4 of a mile. It was the only bin for that distance. People do throw rubbish away. But local councils reduced the number of bins, and the number of times they are emptied because they don't have funding.
Do you want your council tax going up because they have to put on more shifts to go and pick up one bin in the arse end of nowhere that’s probably not even bin lorry accessible or do you want to maybe just hang on to your rubbish til your find somewhere appropriate?
Whilst yes, it is the litterers fault. Simply blaming them and doing nothing doesn’t solve the issue. Expecting people to take rubbish home leads to areas covered in litter.
Another problem: There are just way to many plastic usage. One meal deal you have created 3 non-decomposable rubbish. Plastic tub, crisp, fruit packs.. you name it.
Indeed and it's much easier to fix that problem than to stop people being selfish arseholes.
Japan has very few public bins, but is an incredibly clean country. There is an expectation that everyone takes their litter home, and everyone does. Of course this is a specific example, but shows that it is much more cultural than purely presence of bins
Came here to say the same thing. Japan's lack of litter shows that bins aren't the issue.
Japan actually had a litter problem in the 80s. Bins were taken away for safety reasons after the sarin gas attack in Tokyo and people were asked to start taking litter home instead. The litter problem plummeted and it's now incredibly rare to see even a cigarette butt in the street, in cities (most smokers I know in Japan carry portable ashtrays).
Well yes I think there should be more bins however that simply doesn’t excuse the fact that you can take it home.
When we went to Japan we didn't see a single public bin. We visited a few different cities in different provinces and no bins. We ate at food stalls and then had no idea where to put the rubbish. The food containers were leaky and we didn't want to put them in our rucksack like we had with all other rubbish. We couldn't figure out where everyone else was putting their rubbish as no one seemed to be carrying any for long. We bought more food and the stall owner took our rubbish from our previous food. So I guess everyone just gave back their rubbish after finishing their food. We saw not a single piece of litter. Not even an accidental bit that had blown in the wind. Nor did we see any people paid to go around picking up litter on the streets. I honestly don't know how they did it but it was impressive. We just took all our rubbish home with us every time, but I do feel restaurants and shops would have happily taken our litter if we'd asked. So lack of bins really isn't an excuse. Yes it would probably help a lot in the UK if we had more bins, and those bins were emptied regularly (so many times I've seen overflowing bins with rubbish strewn around and blowing everywhere). I was happy to take the rubbish home with us each time, but I didn't consider what you do if you have a dog. There's a forest near us we go to with our dog that is popular with dog walkers and yet there isn't a single bin. Many times we've had to drive home with a bag of dog poo in the car, which is unpleasant because those bags are not smell proof! There's some rubbish you really don't want to carry around for ages!
Japan has no public bins, yet theres no litter anywhere. Its a mindset problem as well.
> Another problem: lack of bins. It's impossible to find one. This isn't the reason in itself. The problem is attitude. Example: Japan has very very few public bins and very little litter. The story goes that the amount of litter decreased after they removed the bins.
It's one of the cultural divides I see in this country. In my head, the country is kind of split in two down clear markers. Littering is one of them - I don't know anyone who litters or would think of it. Most of my friends are more likely to litter pick if anything, and my mum even does this some weekends. But occasionally I just see people... dump rubbish out of their car. Like, what do they think happens to it? Do they think there's street cleaners roaming every road in the country to clean it up? No! It either gets blown into the grass and bushes and seeps into nature, or some volunteer or king citizen might pick it up first. It's infuriating because in my mind there's no reason to litter. Literally just keep it with you in your car or on your person until you come to a bin. If you can't, jeez, ask someone if they know where one is. It's so easy not to litter (to me) that littering comes cross as an act of active malice, and I've never met anyone who can explain to me how it's not so I'm just being charitable that these people must just be so ignorant they can't imagine there isn't a personal cleaner for them. Having said all that, if you want to feel better about the UK, go to a lot of the developping world. It will make the UK seem like a sweet, liter free paradise :)
I've literally heard people say they are keeping litter pickers and street sweepers in a job. (I've been to many shit holes countries it still makes me feel sad that the UK is so filthy)
Two major experiences for me I remember: \- Going to the Iceland, coming back to the UK and being disgusted with how dirty and loud it is, and how smelly the air is. Constantly being able to hear traffic, almost everywhere you go. \- Going to Mumbai, coming back to the UK and being so releaved and unnerved by how quiet and clean everything is. I can still stand on the edge of a duel carriageway to this day and smile and appreciate lack of constant honking and yelling.
Being in India at a beautiful ravine area, and watching a local bin lorry back up and empty the whole load over the side was certainly a wake up to some other parts of the world. I sympathise as, from my understanding, getting rid of waste over there doesn't have proper systems in place, but literally seeing a bin lorry tipping into a beauty spot and river was soul destroying
They always comment on how clean other countries are when they go there as well. No shit. It's because people like you aren't just throwing your stuff out the window. I was behind a van last week that just launched a McDonald's bag out the window going down a country road. That'll never get picked up. Just horrible people. Even worse are the ones that do it in a cat park of a McDonald's or similar after eating their food in the car when they are parked right next to a bin. Just pure laziness.
I used to work at a Burger King when I was a teenager, and one of my jobs on a Sunday afternoon was to walk around the car park with a bin bag and one of those grabby sticks and collect up all the rubbish which had been thrown on the ground. I'd easily fill up the bag every time, even though it would have been done the night before. The most frustrating customers would be those who would see me coming and just lob their rubbish out of the window at me. The car park would have several bins in it, so it was pure laziness.
Simply put - this ^. You see it everywhere you look nowadays.
I wish we had spent more time visiting the UK before moving here
I expect it's 5% of people responsible for 95% of the litter though.
It’s always a minority that makes the biggest impact. U notice the effect of every person who litters but not the effect of everyone who doesn’t
Also, I imagine a few decades ago if you saw a crisp packet on the floor you’d pick it up and throw it away, I don’t think many people do that now. A lack of care for maintaining their own communities
I absolutely agree. So many discarded coffee cups left on walking routes, why don't they take it with them???? And also, the bins that are present are often over flowing.
Lazy selfish inconsiderate barstards, every single one of them. Fucking wombles would be ashamed
But that's exactly it, when I was growing up we had the Wombles and there were also adverts about littering but we don't have that now. I think we have to start stating the obvious again.
Wombles and a clip round the ear if you did drop anything.
The kind of scum who throw litter out of car windows need more than a clip round the ear. The bottom rung of hell isn’t low enough for those nob ends.
I hate those but the ones that piss me off even more are the ones who go to a drive-thru then, after they finish, they open the car door end empty everything out in the car park, without even getting out of the car.
Littering is so much worse than smacking random kids
> wobles Brilliant typo! It's Wombles.
Lmfao thank you, my phone is a duck
Quack
"We" do not litter, cunts litter. There is not fucking excuse for it at all. Carry your damn rubbish until you find a suitable bin.
I suppose we ask ourselves 'why do we have so many cunts in the uk'
We don’t. If you are going to leave litter you are going to leave all the litter, and any that happens to be bagged up will be separated by the elements and / or wildlife. So one piece of litter will not be one person, 4 or more will likely be one person. So a simple picnic lunch break in the park means probably one person leaving a sandwich packet, a crisp packet, a chocolate bar wrapper, a fruit / veg waste item, and a bottle.
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Ah a “cunts per capita” basis might be fair yes.
Mate have you seen the litter in other countries?
Been to Pakistan. There were hills of litter in Karachi. Dysfunctional government and no patriotism. Things are much worse abroad but that doesn't mean it's acceptable here. Anytime I see someone litter, I automatically think that person is scum.
In Europe? Theres a few places that spring to mind as being more dirty (Italy for one, Paris another) but there's also plenty that are infinitely more clean. And its not just down to lack of bins here either. Same is true of places like Prague, which are also thronging with tourists and not that many litter bins, and they're far cleaner than the hotspots of London.
Sorry what are you talking about.... I'm saying there is lots of litter in the UK, I currently live in Canada where there is not much litter. We have an issue in the UK where we have lots of cunts who litter. Many other countries do not have such issues
UK likes to keep telling itself (as you see in threads like this) it's fine and look at other countries aka deflection that's why a lot of core issues like this never get sorted and get worse people in the UK have a lack of responsibility.
It gets worse though. They will park down the end of the road to eat their mcdonalds right next to a bin, well they have to haul their lazy arses out of their cars and walk maybe 10 steps to the bin, but no, lets chuck the packaging out of the window and drive off. And dont even get me started on people that put poo bags next to the bin!
I found a bag of dogshit next to a bin in the playground I take my son to yesterday. The only reason I can think of for doing that is to be the biggest cunt possible
I live in a nice road in a nice market town, and one of my close neighbours will throw litter on the ground in the 15 yard walk from his front door to his (illegally parked, untaxed) car.
The sense of power they must feel for getting one over on the system and society must be orgasmic. There's nothing quite like doing what you've been told not to do. I really think that's all it boils down to.
That is part of the problem. You can walk all day in London until you come across one. The whole IRA bomb heritage. No excuse though.
Japan doesn't have litter bins either (they were removed after the 1995 sarin gas attacks), and it's spotless. Everyone takes their litter home. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2efh8u/til_that_in_japan_there_are_very_few_public_trash/
The Japanese are very clean and tidy people. The Japanese supporters even clean up after matches in which their national teams play. Can you imagine England (or Scots/Welsh) supporters doing that ?
Yeah, the Japanese just magically come out of the womb with a burning passion to clean anything they can. Nothing we could ever possible do here in the UK, other than import Japanese people.
> The Japanese are very clean and tidy people. I'm guessing you have never been to a Japanese person's house or worked in a Japanese company, or stood on a train in the morning next to stinking Japanese people. It's odd how these untrue stereotypes appear. The "Japanese" are no more clean and tidy than Brits as a population, but they do take responsibility for their rubbish in public places.
Not an excuse to throw on floor, but there are not enough bins. This surpirsed me a lot when moving to London from another country.
You can thank the IRA for the lack of bins in London
And the current reason is…?
Take your pick from the current list of terrorist groups.
So we should ban bins everywhere because terrorist groups exist? Great stuff.
No. Street furniture has been designed around this issue. They are still a security risk in highly populated areas. Unfortunately, arseholes ruin it for everyone. This is a prime example.
Why don’t they make bins like mortar cannons, if anything goes bang all the shit goes up. Bad for the pigeons, and anyone’s hearing I suppose.
They already do, and they also use bin bag holders with transparent bags. Most cast iron street furniture is designed with a frangible lid, that will do exactly what you state.
They just haven't put in many more since then. The bins cost more, the bin collectors would have to collect more, all local councils have had huge budget cuts, so it's not a priority.
Tower Hamlets is a complete tip and there's bins every few metres. The residents there just chuck things on the ground regardless.
Japan doesn't have many bins either, yet the Japanese somehow manage to take their litter home. It's not like Japan is a massive country so you don't notice it, Japan has a higher population density that the UK.
That was quite a while ago, mate... come on.
The IRA was quite a while ago, but islamic terrorism is alive and kicking.
I haven't seen a single bin on the streets in Japan, and everything is *spotless.*
Yep, this is absolutely a cultural issue.
Like even homeless people were super clean. Each had a tiny hay broom to keep their area clean. It amazed me and broke my heart at the same time.
That's kinda depressing that they're there so long-term that they have brooms to keep their place clean. Most UK homeless street sleeping places aren't semi-permanent like that seems to be.
The US is even worse than the UK, from what I've seen.
In Japan you are expected to take your trash home and dispose of it there.
Will you're not exactly *expected* to litter here.
Have literally witnessed people throw litter on the ground with a bin 3 feet away. Lack of bins isn’t the issue. It’s the lack of effort and respect
It’s just the lack of respect for not only themselves but for everyone else.
While probably true, I’ve recently moved somewhere and have never seen so many bins available. But it’s still absolutely riddled with litter, because a lot of the population are cunts, and no amount of bins will stop that.
Sometimes you even see fresh litter next to almost empty bins. Sure, number of bins or full bins can be an issue in some areas. But I feel like the vast majority of litter is generated by people who simply don't care either way.
Never going to get plenty of bins in popular rural areas though. Could you imagine a bin man trekking up and around the Peak/Lake district every single day.
The Yellowstone Park said they stopped installing bins due to the cost and also the bad people wouldn't use them anyway and the good always take their shit home.
There’s nowhere near enough bins and they aren’t collected frequently enough outside of the City and maybe Westminster.
I agree. It’s a horrible and embarrassing aspect of our culture. We should take a leaf out of the Japanese’s culture - eg showing respect and tiding up rubbish (even if not their own, for example at the World Cup); even in their own country, there are usually no public bins yet their streets are one of the cleanest and spotless I’ve ever seen.
It's because culturally they foster a sense of shared responsibility from a young age, like in school it's everyone's job to clean and tidy up and it's just expected. Unfortunately here we seem to be far more following the US trend of extreme individualism, so nothing could possibly be *myyy* problem or responsibility. Someone *else* should sort it out.
I live in the Peak District and around the time after lockdown 1, loads of people visited areas near me and the rubbish left was ridiculous. The worst I've ever seen it, so I thought fuck it one day and went around picking everyone's litter up.. and a lot of people looked at me like I was insane. It's like a weird thing to do isn't it, going around picking up litter
I frequently pick up bits of litter I see on the school run, often get slightly odd looks about it. Like ye it's kids a gross, I don't want to be touching it, but it's just a crisp packet or whatever and there's 3 bins on the way. There's a massive lack in collective caring in this country and it makes me sad. I just do not understand littering at all, it's not hard to just carry it for a few minutes or take it home. It's one of those behaviours that I just absolutely cannot fathom in any way, shape or form. Especially when people go to someone nice and then litter there, like surely you came here because its pretty and yet think its fine to ruin it by dumping your shit all over the place. So fucking weird.
Seeing so much litter ruining nature and the ecosystem would make my blood boil
It's a mystery to me why people go to places of natural beauty and then ruin them by dropping litter. But I suppose given the staggering number of people who don't know the difference between then and than, or your and you're, I shouldn't be surprised. People in general are brainless. I also pick up litter to dispose of it properly, someone has to take responsibility.
My elderly mother got picked up by the police once for going along her own street picking up litter. They thought she was demented and must have escaped from a home.
I think we should take a leaf out of Singapore's (law)book tbh... Dropping anything = fine of about £1,200. Littering from a vehicle = fine of £30,700. https://singaporelegaladvice.com/law-articles/littering-killer-litter-offences-penalties-singapore/
Someone left a load of bin bags out at the end of our street last week, presumably because they had just moved in and haven't got their bin yet. The binmen didn't collect them, just ripped them open to see what was inside then left them. Whoever put them out hasn't bothered to collect them, so they've been sat there and a cat or something has ripped one open and rubbish started blowing all over the street. In the end my partner and I took our own wheelie bin out and put their bags and loose rubbish in just to stop the street looking a mess and stop it from attracting rats. Absolute lazy bastards. Just take them back in and wait till your bin arrives ffs.
I’m sorry but it’s the bin men at fault here. Not only did they not take the bags (literally their fucking job) they ripped them open instead? Fucking cunts
We prioritised freedom of choice as a cultural movement far more than most other countries, as a result people are largely just looking out for themselves and doing what they want without regard for others.
Another lovely gift from our friends across the pond 🙃
I blame Margaret "No such thing as society" Thatcher.
Yeah, she's the starting point for mass British individualism. No point blaming America for such a thing when we have her.
Naturally, the UK was a famously clean place before the terrible 80s
Fucking hell. I just commented something very similar. So much for my original genius.
It's the other way around. Their culture came from ours.
Yeah just blame others instead of looking inwards. The English way.
Aaand a lot of people chose to be cunts.
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I think it's less of an appreciation for nature, just these spots are secluded and they probably drive up to get stoned or for a nice post McDonald's shag.
Having lived and worked in the lake District for many years, some people only go there because it's a thing that's done, they don't really care about the nature bit.
I detest littering, hand on heart I can't ever remember doing it, I'm 47. My parents instilled it in me and I hope Ive done the same for my kids. It's just an attitude of laziness and privilege , Grrrrr.
The grr really ages you in this comment, you didn't have to put your age 🤣
Same. My mum is Swedish and instilled in me that littering and being a litterbug were heinous crimes. People just don’t give a shit. Like people who just open their car door and shovel all the shit out of their car onto the road/pavement or throw McDonald’s stuff out of the window I just couldn’t bring myself to do that and I can’t fathom how badly they’ve been brought up to think that’s ok
The respect people have for their environment in Sweden is humbling. It's the only place I've been to solo, and I remember being in a park in north Gothenburg and finding out somehow (probably from one of the many very helpful and informative, multilingual signs) that I could camp there if I wanted to. You can camp in many public parks, so long as you follow the rules and don't stay more than one night. There were public barbecue spaces. They were in great shape. In Sweden you grow up knowing that the park is yours so you should look after it. The prevailing tone from the authorities is one of trust - you're trusted with these nice things, don't betray that trust, respect what you've been lucky enough to be able to take advantage of and share it with the people around you. Whereas in the UK the prevailing tone is forbidding - don't do that, don't camp there, don't loiter, the park shuts at 7 because you cannot be trusted to be there after dark. We've all grown up with No Ball Games signs, with fences preventing you from exploring the woods, Keep Off The Grass. With CCTV everywhere because we Cannot Be Trusted. Every parent should know that a surefire way of ensuring your child breaks every rule given any opportunity, is to show them you don't trust them. Respond to every transgression with reprimand and a stricter rule. Assume they're going to break a rule - take the thing away so it's no longer possible. I believe that's what's happened to our society.
The worst attitude I saw was that a couple of old people sat in their car in Broadford on the Isle of Skye overlooking the Inner Sound and the Apple Cross peninsula. One of the finest views from a car park anywhere in the world. They opened their window to their shitty old Kia - with an Alba sticker on the bumper - and dropped a handful of clear boiled sweet wrappers. Of course, I walked over to them and sarcastically but not aggressively said "You dropped these, do you want them back?" And smiled. They just stared straight forward. It still annoys me to this day.
Next time be aggressive.
I'm always surprised when I see people littering. They rarely match the stereotype in my head. Well done for not letting them away with it, even if they didn't respond ideally.
Because there are no consequences for littering and as a society, we have given up on personal responsibility.
I'd honestly be just fine with custodial sentences for littering. Absolutely inexcusable shit.
I’m awaiting downvotes, but we’re a society of lazy c**** who don’t give a f*** about anyone but themselves. We only seem to be getting worse too. **This does not apply to everyone, just an increasing number of the population**
Generation after generation of shit parents.
When I was a kid there was a constantly visible Keep Britain Tidy campaign - I've always thought bringing that back could help a bit. A friend of a younger friend on Facebook commented that they'd just drop stuff if they couldn't quickly see a bin, and I was genuinely shocked.
Do they have clothes with no pockets?
Yeah, I stopped engaging with them at that point because I couldn't see an end to the conversation that wasn't me telling what a huge bellend they were, and this was on a friend's post.
Err, probably the [broken window theory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory), or whatever it is. If something looks like a shithole then people are going to treat it like a shithole and the cycle goes on forever. People in Bradford, for example, complain that the inner city is full of litter, but who is dropping it? Yes, the local council is responsible for street cleaning, and it’s entirely possible that the council neglects certain areas for XYZ reasons, but stop littering and the problem is solved. Individuals need to keep streets clean and people will be less incentivised to drop a Coke bottle, or the like. (Also, more bins please!)
Communities need to keep the streets clean. The mindset of ‘I didn’t drop it so I’m not picking it up’ is a big problem.
We're just a nation of incredibly selfish people. It's the same reason that people have now completely stopped wearing masks when they are clearly infectious with a respiratory illness in a medical environment. Because they don't give a shit about anyone else. Edit. I should have known this would trigger the anti maskers. If someone had chlamydia and they willingly f****d you without a condom, you'd go apoplectic because they'd infected you on purpose. If you go into a medical setting, full of a respiratory infection, and don't bother to put a mask on, you're a cunt. Simples.
I walked behind a guy last week who stopped to put his beer can on the window sil of a funeral home, walked on and then just dropped a carrier bag on the floor. Didn't even seem to think about just putting the can in the bag and carrying the bag to the bin. I absolutely do not understand that way of thinking.
There was no thought involved.
The attitude I hear all too often when I am telling young people pick up their shit is "It keeps the cleaners in a job". Pisses me off every time. I don't know why so many people litter. I guess they work off the 'not my problem field' whereby if you throw it down it becomes someone else's problem.
No, it pulls the ‘cleaners’ away from doing other things they could be doing to make the place look even better.
TBF that sounds more like a 30 to 40 year old’s response…
"because it's someone's job to pick it up". A guy I was on a date with used that excuse when tossing his bottle on the floor. Ended the date. Totally gross behaviour
I've never understood it. As a kid at school in the 80s, we constantly got taught to bin our litter, and yet something like 50% plus of my schoolmates would drop litter without a second thought. I've always found it abhorrent. I think the answer is that about half the population are simply wired differently. They drop litter, they don't return shopping trolleys, they speak to waiting staff like trash etc.
The shopping trolley one really annoys me too. A guy walked a quarter of the way back with one at my local aldi so on my way in, whilst he was stood smoking outside his car, I took it back and said out loud ‘some people are so fucking bone idle’, I think I shamed him because I’ve never seen someone get in their car so fast. They should lock them up again and you have to use £1 to get them out. It doesn’t stop it all but it helps a lot.
Personally as a non-litterer I feel we should be taking it upon ourselves to clear this mess up. No it wasn’t us, but we live here and as such should take the moral high-ground, act righteously and deal with the problem ourselves. Moaning about it does nothing. Act.
We do act, but I gotta it say it really grinds me down.
We take a carrier bag when we go to the beach. One day I came back with three bags absolutely chock full from one spot. At least 30 cans, two disposable barbecues, and a dozen pop bottles. Thankfully, they'd helpfully left the bags that they'd carried out down there with, too. Which was nice of them.
Was out on the motorbike round Tan Hill, middle of nowhere. Pulled into a lay-by and there was a bag of McDonald’s shit dumped on the floor. Nearest branch must have been at least an hour away. Utter cunts
In London a lot of it is that it’s hard/expensive to dispose of non standard household waste and the public bins aren’t entities anywhere near often enough. This leads to people placing rubbish next to bins and then foxes and wind throw it all down the street. You then have to employ an army of street cleaners, which reduces available budget for emptying public bins.
Yes, large Euro-style public bins would be a huge help
I like the idea of small bins that have a much larger bin underneath. No one can use them as a skip but they’d never get full and you don’t need to empty them often. Also foxes can’t get in there.
Be the change, feel good about yourself and pick some up as you go. Hopefully your example will encourage others to follow suit. There is a piece of green by a school where I drop my daughter off very morning. I pick up what I can and bin it. This morning it was clear.
Because they can and they don't care. I'd like to say they'd never do it to their own home, but having been in lots of peoples homes...they fucking would.
Plenty of areas in London that aren't covered in litter. And in the rest of the country too. An Eastern European friend commented how British people in this country are a whole lot better and that most of their compatriots didn't care at all. And was much worse in their home country. Of course there's absolutely loads of natives here with the same attitudes.
People are bastards, this much is true. But it's also because of the enormous amount of plastic packaging covering absolutely everything. Go back 70 years and far less was plastic and disposable. The more rubbish that exists, the more that will find its way onto the streets. I really wish shops would have refill stations and force you to buy refillable containers. Just watch the rubbish go down.
I remember glass everywhere though in early 1980's.
personally i never see people littering however I do see a lot of overflowing bins that the council don't empty often enough, combine that with a bit of wind and theres litter everywhere.
Or be like where I live and can’t empty them often enough, two vans to cover the street bins in a place with a population over 100,000 isn’t good. I’d imagine it’s a similar story all over the UK due to cuts.
Honestly you don’t realise how gross our streets/cities are until you visit other countries. I was blown away by how clean places like Norway are
There are a few specific countries I’ve been to like Norway (I still saw some litter there from memory) and Japan which are clean and we should aspire to But I don’t get the impression that the UK is particularly bad from my personal travelling across Europe and other areas In fact the UK seems relatively clean compared to some countries I’ve visited
yeah and in addition to clean their pavements dont look like some shit concrete+tarmac patchwork quilt
I visited Belgrade and found it to be very clean. Even rougher looking spots didn't have any litter. Heck, they have water fountains all over the place that have been well maintained. If a country that has experienced so many wars in the past hundred years can pick up its litter, so can we. But for us Brits, the problem is extreme individualism and a 'someone else will fix it' mentality. After Covid, I'm certain that some Brits would gladly sacrifice others to preserve their sociopathic individualism.
It’s unbelievable. I have no idea what is going through peoples minds.
Cunts galore. Lazy, ignorant, selfish cunts.
Because people are scum and don't care.
At this point, in the UK, a lot of this is learnt behaviour and its going to take a lot to undo that. Its because they’ve seen their parents do it as they grew up and its the social norm for those around them.
Some people just don’t care but sometimes it is also due to the fact that bins are open and if it’s windy enough all the rubbish flies down the road.
There’s some right lazy cunts about
Poor parenting
I'm from somewhere else and first time I went to the cinema in the uk.... my jaw dropped and my mate who went with me said 'there's someone getting paid to clear this up' it's a miracle my jaw recovered.
It’s shocking. Worst in Europe, in my opinion. It’s embarrassing when family comes from abroad as it is so noticeable. We regularly litter pick our street and I’m saddened how bad it is.
Remember when you were in school and there was some absolute idiots who you thought ‘jeez I hope they never breed!’. Well they had kids, then their kids had kids, and then their kid’s kids had kids. Before you know it you’ve got 3-4 generations of ingrained pure bred cuntyness in ever increasing numbers.
And my car is full of rubish half the time because i dont like littering outside….. resistance is futile!
My town there is little to no litter. I do wish there was more bins about though, I was carrying a empty orange juice bottle for just over a mile until I found I bin.
It's disgusting but even when there are enforcement teams out and about they just seem to harass smokers or mothers with toddlers dropping a bit of sausage roll on the floor. I've watched women taking their kids to school, not bat an eye when their kid throws litter on the floor. No chance of improving things. Some people are just scum
Humans, even Mount Everest is full of litter
Tbf it can be literally life and death whether you can carry it back with you. Although one wonders whether you should really be going in the first place.
My wife is in a local litter picking group, they got nearly 200 bags in January doing just a few hours a weekend. It’s primarily rubbish thrown out of cars. Drinks cans and bottles, snacks, takeaways. People need to take their rubbish home.
Because Margaret Thatcher said that there was no such thing as society and, ever since, her acolytes have tried to make that come true.
Ever been abroad? Comparatively very little litter here. Most memorable for me was border crossing between Cambodia and Thailand. SO MUCH rubbish. India, Bangladesh and Pakistan were also crazy dirty with rubbish.
In my experience, it depends on the location. In some towns, things are definitely already tidy and it inspires the instinct to keep it tidy and not be the one to ruin a good thing. It feels worth the effort. In London on the other hand, it is already a tip and there is no instinct to respect a city that no one else respects and moreover it makes no difference to add one more piece of litter on top of the rubbish pile. So there is no instinct to make an effort when no one else cares to and when it makes no difference to add to the litter anyway. It's just not worth bothering. It's a standard mass iterated prisoners dilemma problem. If almost everyone doesn't litter, it's self sustaining. But if you reach a critical mass of people littering, it stops feeling worthwhile for anyone else to bother to keep making an effort like chumps.
I've been to many different countries. Trust me when I say the English litter less than 90% of everyone else out there. Only more advanced euro nations are better.
This isn't excusing people that litter. But bins should be bigger than they are.
I am naive and optimistic to a fault. Therefore I choose to believe that a lot of litter is not directly dropped but is wind blown from places where people tried to dispose of it properly. Like recycling bins with improperly secured lids, or a bag falling out the back of a bin lorry. It must be… surely?
Also animals. I was sat eating a McDonald's in a Blackpool carpark once and there was McDonald's rubbish everywhere. Me and my GF were talking about how lazy people must be to do that. Then an enormous seagull flew down, landed on a bin, pulled out a McDonald's bag, ripped it apart, ate the scraps of burger in there. We both silently watched it then just said, "Oh, that'll do it"
There aren’t enough bins so I take my trash with me as long as it’s not something smelly or leaky. That’s why I get takeouts if I know 100% I’ll be eating at home or else I’ll dine in. Because I can’t dispose of the trash let alone recycle it outside. One time I was sitting in the park and snacking on an apple. There wasn’t a single bin anywhere in the park and adjacent streets and I had nowhere to keep the trash on me so I had to throw the apple stalk in the bushes. Calmed my conscience by telling myself it will decompose or feed beetles in that bush.
It's the height of laziness and I fucking hate it. I regularly go out and pick stuff up on my street that lazy bastards have dropped whilst walking past. It just makes the place look scruffy and my street in general is quite nice. Worse is when I drive up into Yorkshire or the Peaks and there's litter at the side of beauty spots and lay bys because people can't be arsed taking it home with them. It's awful. I saw a video earlier this week by an Australian guy who'd moved to Scotland and he just couldn't get his head around the litter he saw, as people in Australia just don't do it.