# Littering and class/culture/ethnicity **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 6, 2021, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472 "2021-04-06T08:24:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2021, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/21 "2021-04-07T04:53:19Z")
> [@kambuckta](#): > > Since the mid 1970’s, when the government instituted a massive campaign to Keep Australia Beautiful hmm…why did a sophisticated and modern country like Australia need a massive campaign to teach something so obvious and natural? (and yes, America did the same thing, with a huge campaign starting in 1964 under president LBJ. ) The most basic concepts that seem obvious and natural to us today, were not so obvious to our parents… So yes, as the OP states “class/culture/ethnicity” play a part. But mostly, it’s an issue of education. We weren’t born sophisticated and litter-free. We had to be taught. Even us sophisticated folks. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2021, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/22 "2021-04-07T12:23:54Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Cultural issues are indeed complex and delicate, but you know what helps? Actual infrastructure. Make sure that there are plenty of garbage cans and that they’re emptied frequently, and hire people to supervise and clean the sites - the kind of people who aren’t afraid to shout at visitors for littering. That’s half the battle right there. In my travels, that’s been my experience: one epithetical descriptor for ‘emerging nations’ is, or ought to be, if and how they deal with refuse. In so many places, you just put it out in the street (where nothing and nobody ever takes care of it), or take it to the vacant lot in your 'hood and leave it there (where it’s dealt with in the same manner – ie, not at all). Or it’s burned. The health implications of how sanitation and rubbish is handled are huge, but … where there isn’t any infrastructure … there just isn’t any. And where there’s no money, or where the money is stolen not far from the point in the government where it is received … So people who grow up without that infrastructure, even when they emigrate to ‘developed nations,’ may be at a significant disadvantage in terms of ‘getting with the program.’ Yeah. I’ve been to some phenomenally beautiful places that were just choked with trash. It’s powerfully disheartening. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2021, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/23 "2021-04-07T12:50:22Z")
You gotta start with a militant, well educated, children’s corp, I think . Turn a whole cohort at once. Truly, the children WILL lead the way. They WILL get gramps on board. This was a VERY successful tact, turning opinion from smoking as normal, regular, no big thing. It’s hard for gramps to resist the pressure of his grand daughter’s tears, that smoking could kill him! I have seen the same as the OP many times in SEAsia. Boatman takes 6 out snorkelling for the day. Being western tourists, they meticulously gather all their garbage, from throughout the excursion. As you get off the boat he says, ‘Okay, leave that, I’ll take care of it!’ Wave goodbye from the beach, watch him sail off…and then dump all the garbage into the sea. Where he was just making a healthy living, escorting tourists drawn to the pristine beauty of the oceans and environment of his beautiful country. It is unimaginably frustrating to watch. But over a couple of decades I have actually seen change coming. It hasn’t always reached outside the cities, but the younger generation are demanding a voice at least. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2021, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/24 "2021-04-07T14:14:29Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > But a long time ago, I saw a woman walking about a half block away, wearing a fur coat. She took a Kleenex out of her pocket, blew her nose and, very demurely, dropped the tissue on the sidewalk. Not really that surprising, though, even a long time ago. Wearing a fur coat tends to be a statement of “I’m better than everyone else, let some little person clean up my shit.” ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2021, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/25 "2021-04-07T14:16:08Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > If you’re wondering where all the trash disappears to, visit the beach. We observed the same on the islands of Croatia. Absolutely heart-stopping natural beauty (in a severe Mediterranean way, not a tropical paradise), with gorgeous gem-clear lagoons, but the beaches were ankle deep in random plastic crap. Also, along the island motorways, we saw several sites that had become impromptu rubbish dumps. Tied-off kitchen bags, appliances, furniture. One even had a burned-out car tipped onto the pile. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2021, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/26 "2021-04-07T17:00:48Z")
Litter is not entirely a [matter of personal irresponsibility](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Keep_America_Beautiful). > [@](#): > > Keep America Beautiful was founded in 1953 by group of businessmen from the beverage and packaging industries who were concerned that government would make them responsible for solving the litter problem by regulating their industries. [Howard Chase](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Howard_Chase_(Late_PR_Professional,_Academic)) was an early PR consultant to KAB and in the 1970’s went on to become vice president and assistant to the chairman for public affairs of the American Can Company … In the early 1970s a new campaign was launched with the theme “People Start Pollution, People Can Stop It”. Environmentalists were not happy with the campaign theme and wanted KAB to focus on making producers responsible for packaging waste, but KAB’s industry backers refused. We produce an enormous amount of excess packaging shit, some of which ends up carelessly discarded and all of which requires a significant amount of energy to make, ship and dispose of. The end user is but a fraction of the problem. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2021, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/27 "2021-04-07T19:38:55Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > We produce an enormous amount of excess packaging shit, some of which ends up carelessly discarded and all of which requires a significant amount of energy to make, ship and dispose of. The end user is but a fraction of the problem. Yeah. Also an enormous amount of non-packaging but designed to be temporary shit. For a couple of million years, we just tossed anything we didn’t want around any longer anywhere that it was convenient to toss it. And that was fine. Really, genuinely, perfectly fine, for two reasons and part of a third: for one, anything we tossed was biodegradable, or else it was rock. In any case, a part of the environment that that environment was entirely used to and capable of dealing with. For two, there weren’t all that many of us; so if the immediate environs got overly piled with garbage, there was room to just go slope off somewhere else for awhile until that garbage broke down and was recycled into nutrients for more fresh stuff we could eat or wear; and in the meantime there was room for the creek to clean itself before it got to the next group. And for the partial third: we didn’t usually produce a whole lot of stuff that nobody wanted. None of that is true any longer. The species is having some trouble adjusting to the need to give up what was, for all of prehistory and much of history, entirely reasonable behavior. It’s terrible behavior now for reasons in addition to producing a lot of entirely unnecessary non-biodegradable disposables; but that most certainly isn’t helping. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2021, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/28 "2021-04-07T20:58:17Z")
We absolutely do, according to Google. [Total Wine & More](https://www.totalwine.com/spirits/ready-to-drink/whiskey-cocktails/c/191016) ---
**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:** [April 7, 2021, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/29 "2021-04-07T21:05:21Z")
I have actually done the “you dropped this” thing to litterers in Montreal. Sometimes they thank me and take back their trash, but sometimes they just shake their head and say “no.” They just refuse to take back their own trash. I guess all I can think of as a reason that someone would do that is that people don’t like being told what to do. Or maybe because I picked it up, they think I’m now the one with the responsibility to throw it out. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2021, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/30 "2021-04-07T22:00:40Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > Anecdotally, working in IT in the US, I became friends with many immigrants from India. One young lady shared how she had married for love, instead of having an arranged marriage. The result was that she was shunned from the family. She and her husband moved to the US, as planned, but the whole transition was an eye opener for her. You see, she came from an upper-middle class family in India, and grew up with a whole houseful of servants - cooks, cleaners, drivers. The loudest comment she made about being on her own and living in the US was, “I had to clean my own toilet!” Oh, the horror. Yep, not one of my relatives in India has ever swept or mopped a floor, scrubbed dishes, dusted, or cleaned a toilet. Many of them don’t even make their own beds. That doesn’t mean they would necessarily throw crap all over a tourist site. ---
**Author:** ![fedman1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e495f1/32.png) [@fedman1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman1)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2021, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/31 "2021-04-08T11:01:30Z")
I’m surprised nobody mentioned 'polluted" Rio summer Olympics; you’d think a country exposed to world attention/exposure would have cleaned it up before Games started ---
**Author:** ![filmstar-en](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/50afbb/32.png) [@filmstar-en](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmstar-en)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2021, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/32 "2021-04-08T14:09:18Z")
The capacity for people to litter has grown immensely in the past few decades with the spread of plastic packaging that accompanies every product sold. Great for the convenience of the customer and a marketing opportunity for the suppliers and stores. Another thing that happened was the rise of China and the East as the global manufacturing centre. For every 10 shipping containers full of manufactured goods sent, only three were not empty and those were full of waste to be re-cycled. That situation has now changed and China no longer processes waste to be recycled. Some other countries are taking this business, but there is still a lack of recycling capacity once handled by overseas operators. Most developed countries have a waste management problem and a shortage of land to bury or incinerators to burn the waste they produce. These are systemic problems have only recently climbed up the political agenda with the rise of concerns over damage to the environment. It is a pretty cheap shot to blame litter on the cultural and social manners, or lack thereof. Put the responsibility on the shoulders of the individual to inculcate their children that they must dispose of litter and protect the environment. Fine people who dump rubbish in quiet areas at night. These measures take the heat off the politicians who know there is an expensive problem to solve that will require a budget and infrastructure. Large retailers that generate huge amounts of packaging are not keen to meet the re-cycling costs and these companies have lobbyists whose job it is to influence the government regulation in a way that does not erode their profitability. I am sure there are many hereabouts who remember the pre-plastic packaging days when carrier bags were brown paper, food was sold loose and wrapped in bags or newspaper. It biodegraded and was much less of a problem. In poor countries recycling is a big business, there is a living to be made out of it. As they grow richer, other ways of making a living become possible and consumption increases, outstripping the capacity to recycle. The answer is to put the broken waste disposal and recycling system right. This is happening…slowly. In the UK there are plastic bag taxes at supermarkets. This has been quite a success because it was well thought out incentivising the customer to have recycle their plastic bags or reuse biodegrable carrier bags or pay a small charge. The big supermarkets were incentivised by allowing them to give part of the bag charge to local charities. However, the takeaway food and drink industry have got a long way to go and they must account for the lot of the the unsightly rubbish left behind by visitors. As people grow more prosperous they tend to cook less at home, particularly the younger generation who do not know how to cook. While it is easy to look down conspicuous litter bugs, shaking your head at the lack of pride and personal responsibility exhibited by others. The responsibility for cleaning the streets and parks and publicly owned land lies with local government, as is the enforcement of waste disposal rules. Concerned citizens can do something, but it takes a large organisation to do it consistently at scale. Tax payers need to make their feelings known to politicians at a local and a national level. This is starting to happen, but there is a long, long way to go. People are becoming more conscious of the issue just now because of the lockdown and an increased appreciation of public spaces as an asset. An asset that needs to be protected from the tide of litter that accompanies visitors. But a long term solution to systemic problems needs national solutions to make it work. Have some poor country to become the litter and waste recycling capital of the world and handle container loads of waste material from wherever? There are contenders for that. UK rubbish disposed of by local governments sometimes finds its way, right across the world because there is not enough land to bury it locally. That still requires a collection and sorting system at source…and that requires a solution to the Mc Litter problem of excess, wasteful and polluting packaging. There are lots of interesting ideas, but I do wonder if anywhere has taken this problem seriously and solved the problem end to end? It is not exactly the glamorous ‘flag ship’ issue in which politicians see career enhancing opportunities. But then concerns over climate change, burning fossil fuels environmental concerns that were a by product of industry were a fringe issue a couple of decades ago and are now mainstream policies. So things may change. ---
**Author:** ![chela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chela/32/21582_2.png) [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2021, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/33 "2021-04-08T15:56:44Z")
Actually no it’s not perfectly fine to toss biodegradable trash in the woods or bushes. In some environments that banana peel or whatever will stick around for a long time, it’s not a native food source for wildlife, the seeds may not be desirable to the area. I realize you are not the only one who thinks it’s no big deal on an apple core thrown into the bushes, now you and others are feeding the wildlife pesky raccoons etc. Wrap it up if you must and throw it away responsibly, not a big deal. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2021, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/34 "2021-04-08T17:10:38Z")
> [@kambuckta](#): > > Upon talking to a local person later that day, he told us that the emerging middle-class in Vietnam consider removing their own rubbish as ‘beneath’ them, that taking their crap and putting it in a provided bin was somehow demeaning. Yeah, sadly this is much the same attitude in China. In a cafe or fast food restaurant, say, I have never, in 8 years of living here, seen anyone throw away their own trash – they always leave it for the staff to clear up. Now, obviously that is not littering, but my point is just to give some background that the general culture is that throwing trash is something for working class people to do, not me. So, on the street, people shamelessly litter, and the wealthier they appear, the more likely they are to do so. Also, while every housing complex has distinct bins for different kinds of waste, lots of people just leave bags of unsorted rubbish, expecting someone else to sort their trash for them. In fairness there are enough refuse workers that the streets are spotlessly clean. It just annoys me. --------------------------------------------------- In terms of my native UK I was appalled to see hundreds of vape bottles on the streets of Manchester just before covid. I guess the smoker’s culture is that you can throw cigarette butts anywhere, so you should be able to do the same with metal bottles 🤦‍♂️ But I guess this isn’t really a class thing. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2021, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/35 "2021-04-08T17:51:14Z")
Couches or tires by the roadside I kinda get, it’s a pain to dispose of them and costs money. But bagged dog shit left on the side of a trail!?!? My local park is full of them! Someone went through the trouble of picking up shit, putting it in a non decomposable bag, and decided not to complete the process. How messed up is it that doing _less_ would have been an improvement. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2021, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/36 "2021-04-08T18:04:04Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > Someone went through the trouble of picking up shit, putting it in a non decomposable bag, and decided not to complete the process. How messed up is it that doing _less_ would have been an improvement. Someone brought the bag along, fully intending _not_ to use it. Unless their dog happened to shit while someone else was watching. If they were unlucky, then they’d pick up the shit with the bag and as soon as the other person wasn’t looking, pitch it into the bushes. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2021, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/37 "2021-04-08T18:11:43Z")
> [@filmstar-en](#): > > … the spread of plastic packaging that accompanies every product sold. Great for the convenience of the customer … That much may be debatable. Go buy a charge cable for your phone. They have often been in the stiff heat-sealed plastic shell that you have to use a knife to open, leaving sharp plastic edges that can cut your fingers. And then you have this thing (that weighs as much as the product itself) to dispose of. Or the snack bag that is sealed in a way that prevents you from separating the seal, instead requiring you to cut the bag, which can cause it to tear in undesirable ways. I have seen something of a decline in styrofoam, and that is a good thing. Cardboard is actually recyclable, unlike any kind of plastic. What I think may be the biggest social problem is the inclination to be as disconnected as possible from the source, which is instilled in us. There is an innate component to it, but it is largely a learned behavior that could be trained out of us. Lack of awareness of the production and disposal ends of the system is not a net positive in my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2021, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/38 "2021-04-08T18:39:44Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > Couches or tires by the roadside I kinda get, it’s a pain to dispose of them and costs money In L.A., we have “big item pickup” one day a week. Just call to say you have an item for pickup and your address. I just have a problem with people when the pickup day is Monday, and they put their items on the curb on Tuesday. Even a couple of hours can kill the grass…besides being an eyesore. ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2021, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/39 "2021-04-08T20:05:01Z")
Perhaps we need a [crying Native American on TV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_America_Beautiful) to get us to stop littering. This time we can use an actual Native American in the role (instead of an Italian-American) and we’ll get taxpayers to pay for it (as opposed to the creators of most of the littered items), because for all of its flaws, the damned thing seemed to work. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2021, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472/40 "2021-04-08T20:16:21Z")
I think it’s time consumers step in where governments have failed. What if we all got it in our heads to return all non recyclable packaging (cleanly washed, in a plastic bag, heehee) and simply start leaving them, some what clandestinely, in the store you got them from. Then, the cost of disposing of them shifts from the municipality to the retailer. The retailer can insist on change, they are the ones purchasing the products from the producer. But there is little incentive for them to. If we filled the cart corral a couple of times over, that might motivate them. Things might actually change. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/littering-and-class-culture-ethnicity/939472.md?page=3)