# Are You a Litter Lout? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 14, 2017, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823 "2017-02-14T15:55:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/41 "2017-02-16T19:07:54Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Sounds like a Capitalist/Conservative line to me. ‘Look at me! I’m a “job creator”! Hur, hur, hur!’ > > A socialist would understand that it’s up to each member of society to do his or her part to reduce the amount of litter in a community. I was confused by the throwaway “socialist” comment as well. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/42 "2017-02-16T19:16:04Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > You usually are in fact growing public, not private sector, jobs and thus growing the govt by littering in public. Mmmmmmmaybe, if “public littering” specifically meant “littering on public land.” The jackwagons who are throwing beer bottles / McDonald’s bags / cigarette packages out their car windows, and onto my yard, are committing public littering, but that litter winds up on private property (mine). In the 21 years that I’ve lived there, the village has yet to send out a public employee to clean up that litter, and the private contractor who winds up doing it (i.e., me) has yet to be paid for his efforts. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/43 "2017-02-16T21:51:59Z")
I’ll include several businesses in this group of litterers: The distributors of the local yellow pages that throw their tome in my yard twice a year. The publisher of the local paper, which I do not subscribe to, that throws promotional advertising papers (_Neighborhood Round-Up_ or _Directional Times_) in my yard sporadically. The leaflet advertiser that hires people to stick flyers in your front door handle, which normally blow away and end up in my yard. My email box is where spam is supposed to go, not my front yard! ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/44 "2017-02-16T22:38:40Z")
When sitting at a stoplight and the person in the car in front of me drops a cigarette butt out the window, I’ve often thought of getting out, picking it up, and handing it back to them saying “Here, you dropped this.” Except I really don’t want to be picking up something that’s been in a stranger’s mouth. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/45 "2017-02-16T23:04:50Z")
> [@Jefferson](#): > > I remember being surprised, some years ago now, when the issue of littering came up during a pub discussion with work colleagues. When a number of them happily admitted they threw little on the streets regularly. I’d always thought that those who did were low-life scally types - the sort who smashed up phone boxes, and the like, for a laugh. > > But these people (or so I thought) were above that - normal law abiding types. One socialist line they came out with was the: it keeps someone in a job (picking it up). > > What about you? Sounds like you hung out with some real assholes. Though it’s not clear what you mean by “socialist”. It makes it sound like you have a deeper agenda than just asking about littering. Anyway, littering is stupid and I never do it yadda yadda yadda. EXCEPT for when my wife leaves cig butts in the car (I don’t smoke and they are repulsive) and i don’t have time to nag her to clean it up, I WILL dump them next to the curb in front of my house. Why? because I’ve paid enough god damn money in street sweeping fines from parking in front of my own house that I damn well am gonna get something out of it. I wouldn’t do it anywhere else tho. ---
**Author:** ![phall0106](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/phall0106/32/5934_2.png) [@phall0106](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phall0106)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/46 "2017-02-16T23:31:56Z")
When I lived in the city, litter was everywhere. Eventually, I put a garbage can out front by the sidewalk. It was somehow full of discarded chip bags, soda cups, empty cans and bottles, etc. every single week. I don’t know how much it lessened the amount of litter on our block though. (Not much, I’m sure, as we were three houses from the corner where the drain for the gutter was and we’d clean that out periodically and fill at least 2 huge leaf bags full of trash.) It’s not so bad where I am now–even though I’m on a busy street, it’s semi-rural and it’s mostly cigarette butts (nasty). Personally, it drives me crazy to see litter and although I might toss food (apple core, end of bread) into the bushes (for rabbits, squirrels, birds, etc.) I could not bring myself to toss anything else. ---
**Author:** ![Graymalkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@Graymalkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Graymalkin)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/47 "2017-02-17T03:31:37Z")
Here in Oklahoma what astounds me is people pulling into a gas station, or about to leave one, and opening their car door and dumping out what must be an old soft drink, coffee, or whatever–right where others will be parking and entering and leaving the store. And they donn’t care if anyone sees them do it or not! ---
**Author:** ![Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brown_eyed_girl/32/3574_2.png) [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brown_Eyed_Girl)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/48 "2017-02-17T03:45:37Z")
> [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](#): > > I will admit to, on occasion, tossing a wad of gum out the car window, but other litter stays in the car until I get home. Same around the house, any litter gets picked and trash-canned. So, it was you!!! _shakes fist_ Do you know what chewing gum + hot pavement + bike tires equal? Sticky, hard-to-clean frame and wisps of gum all over my legs. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Jefferson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@Jefferson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jefferson)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/49 "2017-02-17T18:48:46Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > Sounds like you hung out with some real assholes. Though it’s not clear what you mean by “socialist”. It makes it sound like you have a deeper agenda than just asking about littering. > > Anyway, littering is stupid and I never do it yadda yadda yadda. EXCEPT for when my wife leaves cig butts in the car (I don’t smoke and they are repulsive) and i don’t have time to nag her to clean it up, I WILL dump them next to the curb in front of my house. Why? because I’ve paid enough god damn money in street sweeping fines from parking in front of my own house that I damn well am gonna get something out of it. I wouldn’t do it anywhere else tho. They were office workers (Civil Servants) so I assumed they wouldn’t do that sort of thing. I thought it was just low life scally types. One of those who argued most strongly for throwing litter, later ducked out of chipping in for the meal on a Christmas night out, but didn’t admit to it (it only dawned upon me many months later that it was he - and he’d left by then). One can only wonder what other things he got up to. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/50 "2017-02-17T19:02:01Z")
> [@Channing\_Idaho\_Banks](#): > > These are probably the same people who proudly proclaim that they do not vote. I actually pick up other people’s litter. And I don’t vote for any scum. ---
**Author:** ![Jennshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Jennshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jennshark)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/51 "2017-02-17T23:33:32Z")
We finished a rewatch of\* Mad Men\* a few weeks ago and one of the “wow, how things have changed!” moments was when they left all the detritus from a family picnic in a park and merrily drove off. Of course, not everyone got the memo about the change. Just yesterday an asspig driver in front of me dropped her cigarette butt in the road; I wanted to chuck something heavy and sharp through her rear window – I mean, besides the basic pigness do people not equate “dropping fiery stick = forest/house/vehicle fluid leak INFERNO?” I don’t give a shit if you smoke, just keep your nasty butts in your nasty-ass car ashtray. We also get a lot of crap in our front yard. We have some college-age renters in the area and their party-animal friends tend to chuck out their empties before driving away (yay!) The weirdness of the week: on Wednesday morning someone left a shopping bag with nine frozen salisbury steak TV dinners in it. My theory is that someone set it on the curb whilst warming up his or her car before work and forgot about the bag. The dinners were DELISH! (Just kidding, I was squicked out just walking the sack to my garbage can). I’m an occasional bio-litterer. Mom taught us that the yardstick for chucking it out the window was “would a squirrel eat it?” Given, squirrels probably eat most anything, but in my mind it allows me to chuck out apple cores because I’m feeding cute lil fluffy-tailed beasties. ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/52 "2017-02-17T23:38:43Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > Agree completely. Colorado has fines up to $1000 and I hope that anyone that litters gets hit with the full amount. I remember even as a little kid seeing a “No Littering $1000 Fine” sign and thinking “Wait, they have to tell people not to litter and threaten to fine them if they do? What kind of messed up world are we living in?” ---
**Author:** ![Jefferson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@Jefferson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jefferson)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/53 "2017-02-20T17:07:14Z")
> [@Evan\_Drake](#): > > I actually pick up other people’s litter. And I don’t vote for any scum. What do you mean, you don’t vote for any scum? ---
**Author:** ![Jefferson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@Jefferson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jefferson)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/54 "2017-02-20T17:08:56Z")
I was expecting quite a number of people admitting they litter. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/55 "2017-02-20T17:31:44Z")
I have old-fashioned conservative relatives and modern liberal friends. The one thing they agree on is littering. The conservative folks grew up with “leave nothing but your footprints” and when they go camping they pack all their unburnable trash out with them. My Dad once made a hiking companion wade into the stream to pick up an empty beer bottle he’d blithely thrown there after drinking it. The liberal folks care about the environment and consider it a social sin to litter. Count me with the ones who don’t understand anyone who litters. ---
**Author:** ![EmilyG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/emilyg/32/364_2.png) [@EmilyG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmilyG)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/56 "2017-02-20T17:42:50Z")
What I will never understand is people who litter when there’s a garbage can a few feet away. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/57 "2017-02-20T17:56:55Z")
The State of Washington has these signs: [Litter and it will hurt](http://www.thesleuthjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/litter.png). Spankings? Floggings? The Rack? ---
**Author:** ![purplehearingaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@purplehearingaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehearingaid)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/58 "2017-02-20T20:18:11Z")
I have no use for people that litter ! I hate when people go a park and litter it up with cans or small liquor bottles . If I have an extra poop bag I will pick up littler and other people dogs shit . People litter at my condo and I wish I saw the person doing it , I did tell one guy to pick his cigarette butt he threw onto your driveway . We had a small fire b/c jackass toss his butt onto the mulch right next to the wooden deck ! :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/59 "2017-02-20T20:30:12Z")
> [@Jennshark](#): > > We finished a rewatch of\* Mad Men\* a few weeks ago and one of the “wow, how things have changed!” moments was when they left all the detritus from a family picnic in a park and merrily drove off. I remember that scene but was skeptical. I’m Bobby Draper’s age, we lived in NY. It’s harder to exactly equate class background\*. But even if Don came from a low class background Betty was apparently pretty upper; my parents both came from class backgrounds in between those two. Anyway we’d never have done that and people like us weren’t any more likely to do it then than now IME. Of course it’s possible any given person or couple of any given background would do that then, or now. But the way MM presented that, implying this behavior was typical, did not ring true to me. \*there’s a definite social class correlation to littering IME; if somebody chimes in with all the upper middle class people they know who litter constantly that’s fine but isn’t going to change what I’ve seen in general all my life in NY, and the show was depicting NY. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823/60 "2017-02-20T20:43:56Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Mmmmmmmaybe, if “public littering” specifically meant “littering on public land.” The jackwagons who are throwing beer bottles / McDonald’s bags / cigarette packages out their car windows, and onto my yard, are committing public littering, but that litter winds up on private property (mine). > > In the 21 years that I’ve lived there, the village has yet to send out a public employee to clean up that litter, and the private contractor who winds up doing it (i.e., me) has yet to be paid for his efforts. 😉 OK but I don’t see how that creates the basis for the original claim that ‘conservatives’ might favor littering because it ‘creates jobs’. Either it makes the govt bigger (ie. the village does hire people to come out and pick it up, as it arguably should since came _from_ public property) and makes the taxpayer pay for that or the individual does it themselves or pays themselves for somebody else to do it. Still seems to be you have to be more brain dead to argue there’s any positive to littering from a free market conservative POV than you do from a liberal/collectivist POV, and I’ve never heard it from a conservative POV. From a left/collectivist POV you can plausibly argue that the need to employ more people at public expense to pick up litter, and pay them above market wages and benefits as is typical for low skilled public employees, is an opportunity to create those well paying jobs, and reduce inequality, without the political resistant to and negative side effects of paying people to do nothing to reduce inequality. The need for those clean up people is at least a silver lining to the negative of littering, from that POV. There’s no silver lining from a free market conservative POV. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-litter-lout/779823.md?page=2)