I’ve often wondered about this. From the beginning of elementary school, we are taught not to be litterbugs. And often they’ll come up with statistics on how long an object will take to decay, or how harmful it is to animals. By contrast, some other countries of the world don’t give littering a second thought and have streets that are a mess.
For me, there are three factors that will influence me on how likely I am to litter something: 1) size of the object (a straw wrapper may go out the window, but a large paper bag will not), 2) how clean the interior of my car is (if my car has just been cleaned out, I may not want a Starburst wrapper ruining everything) , and 3) how populated of an area I am in (no-one is going to notice a chewed piece of gum laying in the median of a highway in the middle of Alabama, but it will probably get stuck to someone’s shoe if they are walking across a road downtown in a city).
Do the rest of you Dopers ever litter? I do occasionally, but never without feeling guilty and discretely looking the other way. What factors influence your decision?
Nope, I don’t litter. I have worked more than one job which involved sweeping up the parking lot, and it’s given me strong anti-litter feelings. A lot of little crap looks as bad or worse than one big chunk. Just don’t! It’s easy not to.
And just so I don’t come off too holier-than-thou, I have thrown my share of cigarette butts out the car window. Now that I don’t smoke anymore, I don’t have to worry about that!
Not that I recall. Usually if a wrapper or bag is small enough I’ll put it in my coat or pants pocket or my purse, and get rid of it when I get to the office or home. Then, of course, I get the mass of junk mail daily from previous apartment tenants, which I take to the fortunately-nearby dumpster.
I did get somewhat irritated yesterday about a driver who stopped in the middle of the road just ahead of me so she could throw a plastic bag out of the passenger side window. Didn’t quite understand the thinking there. But then, I didn’t stop to remove her trash either, so I guess I’m just as guilty.
Never. Occasionally, a small bit of paper or plastic will blow out of my hands in a high wind and I won’t be able to chase it down, but I will never intentionally allow the smallest bit of man-made litter to escape my car or my person; I will put it in my pockets if I have to. I’m a bit more lax with natural litter: apple cores, small bits of orange peel, etc., can be left where they will degrade, but not anywhere paved or where people will likely have to look at it. I also leave pine needles (from christmas trees) outside my house (just a few – I sweep up most, but it’s hard to get them all).
Nope, I never throw any trash anywhere. I always put it in the nearest garbage bin, or in my pocket until I can find one. Maybe it’s the way I was conditioned. Visitors to Canada are always saying how clean it is… perhaps it’s because we’re taught not to make a mess of our environment. Or maybe it’s just me - not wanting to ugly up the place or make extra work for somebody else when it’d be just as easy for me to dispose of my own garbage.
No, never (unless it’s something like apple cores thrown in the grass where birds or squirrels can get to it).
I live on a main street in the city and have a trashcan for public use in front, on the sidewalk. Each week it’s full, but I still find myself sweeping everything from cigarette butt, plastic bottles and pieces of paper from the sidwalk, the street and the small yard in front of my house. It drives me nuts.
Once, when my daughter was about seven, we were leaving a parking lot (driving across it actually) and she threw a gum wrapper out of the window. I stopped the car and made her get the wrapper. She’s never (to my knowledge) littered since. Matter of fact, she recycles all tha she can.
Of course, I live in Pennsylvania, where we just bury our trash anyway. Trash on the outside, trash on the inside, which does it matter?
Nope, I won’t throw small trash out any more than I would large trash. The only thing I will throw out the window is the top of a strawberry if I’m snitching berries out of my newly-purchased box; then I’ll throw it into the grass at the roadside, figuring that some bugs will thank me.
Lately my almost-4-yo daughter has been learning about, and noticing, litter. So we sometimes pick up trash we see. There isn’t much preachier or more self-righteous than a talkative small child who knows that littering is wrong.
OK, I’ll be the first to join Engineer Dude in the corner. I certainly don’t do it on a regular basis or throw anything big on the street. And yes, I do feel guilty when I do it, but I dunno, sometimes I just do it. I will, however, on occasion pick up random litter and throw it away so I figure I’m at karmic equilibrium.
Strangely enough, in Sweden, nobody ever says anything about the evils of littering and yet it is rather clean. Everyone I know who visits it, always says “It’s so clean.” I don’t really think about it, though. Glasgow however, is a whole other story…
I was driving in my neighborhood last week and saw a large size Taco Bell soda cup come flying out of the car in front of me. Soon following it was a TB bag full of trash.
This is why I don’t own a gun.
Cigarette butts bother me a lot, too. Especially people who are standing next to an ashtray and still throw their butts on the ground.
I take the “What if a lot of people did this?” approach to such questions. In this case: What if a thousand people threw out a gum wrapper, cig butt, etc. at this spot? Uggggggh! Therefore I don’t throw out one. I don’t consider myself an exception to the human race. If I expect others to behave reasonably, so will I.
And…
Humans are biodegradable. What if we started dumping bodies in your front yard, would you be okay with that? (I.e., I loathe the “but it’s biodegradable” rationalization.)
Sign me up for the No Litterbug I campaign. I smoke, and refuse to drop my cigarette on the ground - if there isn’t an ashtray in sight, I’ll grind it out somewhere and palm it until I find a trashcan. Sure, it’s unpleasant, and half the time I have to wash my hands for five minutes to get the dead cigarette smell out of my skin, but I figure that’s the price I pay for having such a vile vice in the first place.
Once, I tried to empty a little bit of water from a fast food drink cup while I was the passenger in the car so that I could put the cup in the garbage bag. Unfortunately, I miscalculated how fast the car was going, and didn’t hold onto the cup tightly enough, and it was yanked from my hands by the wind. I was seriously peeved at myself that day.
Don’t even get me started on people who use parking lots as their designated “ashtray emptying receptacle”. Grrrrr.
Never ever, not even the biodegradable stuff. That stuff is ugly to look at, can draw pests, and smells as it rots. Living in the country, I spent many weekends cleaning biodegradable litter from along the road on the edge of our property.
Okay, I’m not perfect, once my parking tag flew out the window when I went around a curve. Instant karma.
I don’t litter, ever. I even have reservations about throwing out apple cores and the like. Sure, it will biodegrade, but I still feel like a slob for doing it. I figure any trash that’s already in my car isn’t hurting anything and it can stay there a little bit longer until I get home or at least to the next gas station, all of which, from what I have observed, conveniently provide trash receptacles. There’s simply no excuse for littering.
I don’t fret over applecore fragments falling out of my window when I’m in the country, but other than that, no. No littering. Not even little bits.
If something accidentally flies out of my window I don’t screech my car to a halt to hunt it down, but I don’t like it when it happens and I certainly don’t do it intentionally.
Nope. I was hearing “Don’t Mess With Texas” commercials at an early age, and those (Along with my mom teaching me that it wasn’t right.) never even got me into the habit.
I have a small trash bag in my car that gum wrappers/straw wrappers/receipts go into and I empty it when I clean my car.
I hate it when people leave nasty diapers in parking lots. I’ve heard friends of mine rationalize it by saying “But I didn’t want to drive around with that smell in my car!” I don’t want to step on a disgusting diaper when I get out of my car either! On the odd occasion where I’ve had to change my kid’s diaper in a parking lot I’ve always wrapped it up as tightly as possible and disposed of it in the first trash can I was able to find.
