My apartment building has about 10 large trash cans out back, towards the end of the summer alot of trash started piling up in the area and being ignored. The landlord is a nice guy, young and holding down 2 jobs and so rather than bug him about the stench I thought I’d do a good deed and clean up the area. So, last Saturday morning I put on my old clothes and work gloves and started in on it, took only about 20 minutes and I felt good afterwards.
The next morning I’m taking my own trash out and I find that some a-hole had walked out to the cans, found that the closest one was full, ignored the 5 empty ones about 4 feet further in and just dropped his 3 kitchen trash bags on the ground! Needless to say by the time I found this a dog or raccoon had torn it up and spread it all over. So I cleaned it up again.
I was this close to digging through the trash to find an address and dumping it at the front door of the lazy jerk.
It’s amazing the cognitive contortions into which people are capable of twisting themselves in order to rationalize taking a bizarre kind of pride out of various kinds of assholishness. Like, “I’m a strong person who resists the labels society attempt to attach to these behaviors. My dumping a used diaper on the sidewalk makes me a trailblazing pioneer, not a self-centered prat. Isn’t it obvious?”
I was going to jump on the “I never litter” bandwagon - in fact, I’ve frequently taken the time to police an area (particularly a favorite walking path).
But paper towels in the bathroom - guilty as charged, that’s something I’ve done, more than once.
And I’ll tell you why - because some bathrooms are designed so that once you’ve dried your hands and used the paper towel to open the door (because you DO NOT want to touch that thing with your bare hands, given the number of people who don’t bother washing theirs), there’s nowhere else to put it. You’ve got one foot in the bathroom, one foot in the hallway, and a trashcan that’s clear across the room. My aim’s good, but not perfect.
Actually, sometimes I’d just take the towel with me and deposit it in a trashcan elsewhere in a shopping mall, or back at my desk while at work.
Nowadays my kids cover me with so many germs that I rarely think about it, much less have time to take precautions, but that IS something I used to do.
At this point my car is a mobile debris field; we’d never litter on purpose, but I’m sure the wind has blown bits of paper out of my car.
The odds of actually getting a disease from a bathroom door are so miniscule as to be not worth considering, in my book. But for more germophobic people than myself, obviously it’s a good idea to have a wastebasket near the door.
I’d just like to say that thanks to this thread, I picked up ten or so cigarette butts that were scattered around a bench I was sitting on this afternoon. There were ashtrays and trash cans like ten feet away! I have some sympathy for people who don’t want to carry a cigarette butt when there’s nowhere to put it within sight, but this is just ridiculous.
I’ve done cleaning work in my time, and I’ve also done a bit of an armchair study of littering as I go about my business, and I’ve got some practical advice for litterers (yes, it’s wrong and I don’t do it, but if you’re going to do it anyway, at least make it easy for the cleaning staff):
In Sydney, there is a law that prohibits smoking on covered portions of railway stations. This means smokers are banished to the ends of the platform where there are no rubbish bins. Yes, I think the law is stupid - allow smoking or ban it completely - and I have some minor sympathy for the smokers’ dilemma regarding what to do with their ciggie butts (they are breaking the law if they walk to the bin under the roof and breaking it if they litter [the latter attracting a smaller fine]). Guys, just drop your cigarette butt on the platform. Drop it right there. DON’T throw it onto the railway tracks. The tracks might get cleaned once every few years (no janitor is going down there to pick up individual butts from the stone ballast). Drop the thing on the ground, and the guy can come through that evening and sweep up.
In a pub where smoking is allowed, use an ashtray! But if you can’t for some reason, again - drop it on the ground. Just right there by your feet. Don’t guiltily drop it right by the wall, so the janitor has to bend down and pick it up individually. Just drop it by your feet with all the other crap that accumulates after a busy night in a pub, and let the vacuum take care of it.
On the street, the road and the sidewalk are the worst places. Drop it in the gutter and let the streetsweeper truck handle it.
In a nutshell, there are two types of litter. There’s litter the janitor has to go out of his way to collect, and there’s litter that will be automatically picked up as he sweeps through anyway with his vacuum, truck, etc. If you MUST litter, keep it to type B.
In my experience, there’s two types of litterers…the assholes, like my aunt who will just toss her garbage out the window as she’s driving, and the ones who just don’t know any better, it’s what they were taught to do. My mom is involved in the Big Brother/Big Sister program, and she had taken her “little sister” through a drive through, and they were eating in the car. When the kid had finished, she asked my mom to roll down the window so she could throw out the trash. She was really confused when my mom told her to leave it, and they’d throw it out later. She’s not an asshole, she’s a total sweetie pie, but she’s been growing up watching everybody else in her neighborhood throw their refuse on the ground, so she thinks it’s the thing to do.
Hey, thanks everyone for throwing in their 2 cents worth.
As I was thinking about this topic today, I flashed on a childhood memory: When my parents used to take me to the movies (this is in the mid-60’s), they told me to throw my candy wrappers and empty cups on the floor. The explanation was that “ushers will come in afterwards and pick everything up”.
As others have suggested, perhaps people just assume that someone will come along and pick up after them…after all, isn’t that one of the reasons that they pay taxes?
I was only trying to tell the truth. I thought that was what this board was about.
WhyNot, I know I didn’t start any fires because I didn’t live outside the city. If I had started a fire, it would have been reported. None were.
If you hate me because I’m a litterer, if you want to pit me because I’m a litterer, I’ll deal with that. I know for sure, though, that I’m not an arsonist.
There are many like me who want to tell the truth. Perhaps I deserve your scorn. But don’t think I care if you judge me.
Sometimes the truth hurts. I hope you haven’t actually caused a fire, but you will never truly know. Despite the hyperbole in this thread, what you’re doing is wrong, and it could cause a fire.
I was a butt-flicker for years, then one day I got busted for it, and saw the light and stopped. I urge you to do the same. It’s unsightly, environmentally gross, possibly will cause a fire, and it gets us smokers a bad name. Carry a portable snap-shut ashtray, or stick the damn stinky thing in your pocket until you find a bin. Stop that flicking now!
There is a worse kind of litter than anything yet mentioned in this thread.
Bagged dog shit.
In most public places around here, it’s now an offence to leave dog shit where the dog deposits it; most dog owners are actually very responsible about this and pick up their dog’s shit in a little plastic bag, and that’s great - because most of them take it away and dispose of it in a designated disposal bin, or with their own domestic refuse.
However some dog owners don’t. It would be better if they just left the shit right where the dog placed it (the rain and sun would break it down in a week or two), but they don’t; they pick it up in one of those little plastic bags, tie the top handles together, then leave it right there, in the bag, or sling it into a bush.
There’s one place I walk along where the path is dotted with little purple plastic bags of putrefying dog shit; another place has a tree that, from a distance, appears to be decorated - Christmas-style - on closer approach though, the ‘baubles’ are actually, yes, they’re liittle plastic packets of liquefying dog shit.
Pick it up and dispose of it responsibly, or if you can’t manage that, just leave it where it is.
One thing that I have noticed is that veterans are less likely to litter. When I was in the Army, part of the daily routine was “police call”, picking up cigarette butts and other refuse from our unit’s area. We were also taught not to litter while in the field, so as not to provide the enemy with intelligence on our movements. That’s where I learned to field strip my cigarette butts and keep them in my pocket until I found a proper place to dispose of them.
I believe some of the propensity to litter is cultural. I’ve visited a number of small towns and cities in Wisconsin with streets that look like they were cleaned and scrubbed on a daily basis. It’s a bit of a shock when you are used to Eastern cities that are full of dirt and trash.
It’s odd. Some blocks seem to always be on top of it. You always see people out there sweeping. There’s never trash on the ground. Things tend to be neat.
Then, some blocks. . .just, fuck it. Every place has trash around. It’s in the streets. It’s all dirty. Dog crap on the sidewalks. Looks worse than some alleys.
It definitely seems to correlate with socio-economic status (that’s not code for “black”. The poor white sections of town are just as shitty).
And, there’s not a lot of in between. It seems you’re either on a neat block, or you’re not. I’ve always suspected that on the dirty blocks, there’s a lot of people, maybe even over half, who want to keep it clean, but there’s just a tipping point of litter beyond which you just have to say “tears in a bucket, motherfuck it”.
A few days ago, I was walking to the bodega. Saw a couple with a little girl about five years old. She finished her slushy, dropped the cup on the ground, parents saw this, and they all just kept going. Thing is, we were right near a taco stand, which had a trash can outside it. Sure, it would have meant walking about twenty feet each way to drop it in there and get back on the main street, but some people don’t want to put forth that much effort.
candide’s car might not have an ashtray. Mr. Rilch’s car doesn’t. But we only smoke when we’re on long journeys, and then we use a pop can. With a little bit of fluid still in it for an extinguishing agent. I’m also wondering if candide literally lives in his car. Also, he should be advised that on SDMB, the truth is no refuge for a scoundrel.
About a quarter mile from my home there is a small shopping complex, 10 shops.
There are 9 litter bins, none are ever full but the fucking pavement outside the MacDonalds is full of discarded crap.
I once saw a prick leaning up against a litter bin, finish his Macdonalds and drop the wrapper on the floor next to the bin…6 frigging inches and he was that bone idle he couldn’t be bothered putting his litter where he should have done.
Anonymity. I believe it is one of the main contributors for road rage as well. Hard to act like a jerk when people you know and respect are watching you misbehave.
The past two and half weeks have been interesting with my Danish exchange student in the US, seeing things through the eyes of a Danish student. As can be imagined, there have been many things which have become eye-opening for me and have caused me to rethink the way I view them, simply because of comments the student has made, or difference she has pointed out. Make no mistake—she’s been very polite, very gracious and appreciative, but also very forthright in her observations.
We have been able to see much of Harrisburg and the surrounding areas (with exception to the extreme northern end of Uptown Harrisburg, which is well-known for its high crime area, including many shootings, lots of robberies and other types of violent crimes), as well as many areas of Philadelphia. Prior to coming to Harrisburg, her groups of 23 students spent a few days in Washington, DC. One of the observations she’s made was that black people (in Denmark they are not “African Americans”) are rarely seen in Denmark, and she’s been surprised at how many of them are in the US. She’s also noticed the condition of the neighborhoods, not only in Harrisburg (and the surrounding suburban areas as comparison to the city environment), but also in Philadelphia and DC. This led to her conclusion that overall black people in American do not have the self respect to take care of property and their belongings, and that where there is a high concentration of black people the neighborhoods are typically physically “ruined” by graffiti, broken windows, lots of trash, unkept yards, etc. Combine that with what she’s seen in the media about Katrina (which hasn’t put either New Orleans, or the community of New Orleans in the best light), she’s walked away with a less than stellar view of a good chunk of the population of the US.