What determines a person’s propensity to litter? Why are certain groups of people more tolerant of litter in their surroundings than others? Is it cultural, does it have to do with social status, or is it some latent hostility to authority?
A couple of things prompted me to start this thread. Firstly, the difference between my apartment complex and the one next door. A stray piece of paper in our common area or out in front will be picked up within hours by one of our residents. Next door, though, it’s a different story. Fast food bags and convenience store cups will linger for days–a wayard shopping cart even started getting used as a piece of lawn furniture for a time. Why don’t they have the same “pride of place” that we do?
Secondly, I see people every day who toss cigarette butts out their car windows, and this habit seems to know no cultural or social boundaries. I see as many fag ends being flicked out of Mercedes and BMW’s as I do out of old, beat-up sedans or pick-ups.
I’m curious to hear what people think about the psychology of litter.
Well, I know here in Arizona, throwing cigarette butts out your window will get you a serious fine, as they are known to have caused forest fires. Personally, I hate to litter myself. I can’t bring myself to throw a cough drop wrapper out the window, for example.
My car is always a mess because I can’t stand to litter. I have never understood people who throw trash around. It especially bothers me when I see trash thrown next to a trash can. What kind of person is that lazy/ignorant/stupid?
What she said. If I don’t have a pocket to put my gum wrapper/used tissue/whatever in, then I carry it with me. I hate litterbugs, and I hate seeing how trash spewed around makes the beauty of a place scarred.
I also pick up my dog’s poo. I can’t stand people who walk away from dog doo. Hey, you knew the K9 Companion Unit came with a waste-producing function.
I think smokers are naturally inclined to litter, and this comes from the amount of waste product produced in the whole business. Each cigarette produces smoke, ash, and a butt, each packet has 3 pieces of cellophane and the foil inside as well as the packet itself, there are matches or disposable lighters to get rid of too … they walk around disposing of their excess smoke in the public air and dropping their ash on public ground, and so the boundary to public disposal of waste has already been crossed; it’s no step at all to treating the butt like the ash and just dropping it where you stand.
Irritates the hell out of me, too, but as blondebear implies, it’s probably better to try to understand it, if possible, than simply curse it. Well, yes, cursing it does feel good.
Some of it’s the group-think of the next-door complex, I think. They just know that their local neighbors aren’t going to do anything about the trash, and none of them want to step out of line from each other too much, so let it lay. …Trash happens, at least in our little piece of the world, and that’s just the way it is. Let’s not get uppity, pretend that we’re so much better than our neighbors. Those fools next door can do whatever they want, they think they’re so much better than we are. They probably have maids come in or something. Tight-asses.
Some of it’s a feeling of powerlessness, as well. …I bust my ass all day, can never satisfy the boss, and come home to find trash scattered around. Like yesterday. And the day before. Last week there was a sofa in the alley, WTF am I supposed to do about that? Sure, I’ll pick it up, as soon as I’ve had a well-deserved beer or three. Hell, why should I care? Nobody else does.
I don’t think there’s an easy solution; don’t think there’s a complete solution in any case. I just think that if enough of us clean up some of it, we’ll have that much of a cleaner world. Maybe our neighbors will take the hint and help out a little, themselves.
How about the notion that humans have an inclination to discard their trash the moment it becomes useless. That’s what archaeologist’s do: they sift through the trash of ages to determine lifestyles in the past.
I’m a confirmed butt flicker, but otherwise, I don’t litter. I dispose of my trash in the proper receptacle. And, when possible I dispose of my butts in ashcans or trashcans, but I’ll be damned if I’ll carry them around with me. I even threw them out the window of my car when I lived in Arizona. I didn’t start any fires.
Archaeologists have developed methods of aging certain sites based upon the stem diameter of pipe stems from the time. I suspect archaeologists of the future (if we have one) will be able to do the same with cigarette butts.
The unsightlyness of it is true, I won’t argue. But I’m not going to keep it in my car. I got to live there.
Sorry if this seems like I’m picking on you (I’m not, really), but this (IMO) is primarily why people litter; they feel burdened by something they don’t want to carry around, so they chuck it and it is no longer a problem, or at least, no longer their problem - it’s a sort of psychological itch for which instant relief is available just by discarding the item.
There are other reasons too, I think - there are people who are genuinely so dim that they are able to walk about without really engaging their brains and for these, dropping litter is little more than a reflex.
And there are people who have a sense of arrogant entitlement; I have heard some argue that ‘if they don’t want me to drop litter, they should put a bin here’ (whoever ‘they’ are).
This is a problem in my area. There are no public trash cans anywhere, and I do think littering would be reduced if there were a few in high traffic areas. My husband and I picked up trash on a beach that’s connected to a park a few days ago, and had to carry it home with us because there were no trash cans anywhere in the large park.
You’re going to get a lot of shit for this, and rightly so. If cigarette butts bother you so much that you can’t live with them in your car, surely you realize how rude it is to make everyone else live with them because you can’t be bothered to put them in your car ashtray and throw them away at your house. Also, I would bet you didn’t stick around every time you tossed a butt out your car window. You have no idea whether you started any fires with your littering or not.
Point is though, that the litter didn’t grow right there on the beach; it wasn’t too much trouble for people to bring it there; it shouldn’t be too much trouble for them to take it away with them.
Another point is that, to litter or not to litter is a choice that doesn’t always make much difference on the individual level, only in the aggregate (kind of like voting). If a substantial number of other people have been throwing their cigarette butts on the sidewalk, for example, there’s not going to be a big noticeable difference whether you throw yours there or not; the sidewalk will still be littered.
Wow, I have never so wanted to drag two Dopers off to the Pit as I do right now. I just don’t want to deal with the shitstorm that would inevitably follow, so I’ll keep this nicey-nice.
Askance, your generalization is ignorant, stupid and untrue. I smoked for 10 years and never once left a butt on the ground. I learned how to field-strip a cigarette so the tobacco fell out and pocketed the filter. I kept a little mint tin in my pocket for my filters, and when I passes a litter can, I’d empty the tin.
I don’t know how **candide **can claim s/he never started a fire. Fires from butts don’t start imediately. They smolder, sometimes for hours, before finally igniting. We lost half an acre of old woods that was on the road to a butt once, and the road had been closed for three hours before the fire was noticeable. So someone, at least three hours earlier, tossed a butt out his car window and kept driving, secure in the knowledge that he’s never caused a fire. On behalf of the hundreds of animals that lost their homes that day, I’d like to thank **candide **for his great work.
I do agree that it’s in human nature to toss things over our shoulder and forget about them. Before plastics, this probably wasn’t even such a big deal. On a trip to Bali, I was rather grossed out by the number of plastic bags flying about everywhere. The hotel manager told me that even a generation ago, banana leaves were used as packaging material. When you ate your lunch, you’d just toss the banana leaf to the ground, where it would get eaten by a pig or ground into fertilizer or just blow away. Now the technology has changed, but the behavior hasn’t - people wrap their lunches in plastic, then toss the plastic to the ground. It doesn’t go away.
While it may be human nature, so is murder, rape and genocide. We’ve all decided those are not good things to encourage if we want to live in a group together. There’s no reason that thinking, reasoning animals can’t choose to overcome their animal natures.
I once did an experiment at work. Someone had dropped a wad of paper towel next to the trash can. I left it there and watched to see what would happen. Sure enough, a bunch of wads of paper towels grew up around the outside of the can even thought the can itself had an open top and wasn’t full. Once I picked up the pile, everyone threw their towels in the can. I saw people bend to pick it up if they missed the opening-- they didn’t bother if they saw other towels already laying there.
My conclusion after a couple of runs of this was that trash attracts trash: if people see one piece of litter, they’re not so bothered by dropping another.
Actually, most of the junk on beaches here is washed up from the water, but people, including myself, would be more likely to pick up trash they didn’t bring in if they didn’t have to take the trash with them when they left.
Well, it shouldn’t, on a moral level. But that doesn’t mean you’re not going to see less litter if there are trash cans. Sure, it’s not unreasonable to ask people to deal with their own trash no matter how much trouble it is. But it might be unreasonable to expect them to, because the evidence shows that they won’t. Creating an environment that encourages people to do the right thing is probably a better idea than just cursing them for doing the wrong thing.
Oh, wow! That’s actually pretty brilliant - what a fascinating bit of empiricism.
The thing that puzzles me is that, while this probably is human behavior in the aggregate, I certainly would never do that. I don’t think I’ve ever thrown paper towel on a bathroom floor. If the bathroom was strewn with paper towels, I’d be disgusted (though I probably wouldn’t pick them up. Because eww.) But it would never even occur to me to do the same. The fact that the bathroom is a mess just wouldn’t even come to mind when I was making a decision about what to do with my own trash - not that there’s any real decision involved before I throw my paper towels away.
I’m sure you’re right, although I’d like to try cursing them too. Seriously, I think an anti-litter campaign along the lines of “you drop litter because you’re an ignorant asshole” might actually work. Then again, it might completely backfire.
You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I’ve seen in Baltimore.
Just last week, I’m jogging in Druid Hill park and a woman walked up to her car with a trash can right in front of it. She threw trash she was carrying under her car, got in and left.
I saw a guy once, at a red light, lean out of the passenger window of a car, and throw a large BK bag (I didn’t know they even came that big) across a lane of traffic, to land it on the sidewalk! Huh? Like, dropping it in the road was bad but the sidewalk was all right?
I saw another guy once at a red light, open his driver’s side door, and just dump a bunch of trash on the ground.
I saw a woman walk up to her car once, open the door, and just clean all the trash out of her car right into the road.
It’s just complete disrespect for where you live, not taking responsibility for yourself, having something be “not my problem”. There’s no shame in it, whatsoever. None. Maybe it’s just flat out assholia.
When you live in a dense population area, you realize just how much better things could be (and sometimes how much better your taxes would be) if people just acted like fucking grown-ups.
There’s also the “by dropping litter, I’m creating a job for someone” argument. Not that it has any merit; by breaking into your house, I’m keeping a policeman employed; by smashing your mouth with an iron bar, I’m ensuring that a dental surgeon can put bread on the table.
