Why do people feel the need to litter?

They have main character syndrome. I have seen people throw empty wrappers and cans out the window of a car at an intersection.<p>They’ve no concept of the public good. Life is just a series of hustles for them to scam their way through existence.

I used to swim laps regularly. At the lap pool there were various bits of equipment for general use, kickboard&#x2F;flippers&#x2F;floats and such. Nobody ever seemed to return them to the racks. They instead massed into a pile at the end of the lanes. So when I was done my routine I regularly pickup them all up, sometime making a thing of how many kickboards I could carry at once. About 50% of the time some other swimmer would say &quot;By pickup those up you are taking a job away from a lifeguard.&quot; Entitled pricks. Some people just don&#x27;t care about the world around them, to the point that they believe their laziness literally <i>supports</i> other people.

In Tokyo, the primary cause of littering is surely that there simply aren&#x27;t trash cans in public places (allegedly removed after the sarin gas attacks, but IIRC Tokyo metro removed the ones inside the fare gates a year ago to save ~1 million dollars a year)<p>Drunk people just leave trash in corners or near vending machines instead, if they can&#x27;t be assed to carry it for the rest of the night until they get home.

The article is based on a 2011 study which drills down deeply into the types of garbage, but not the types of people who litter. Everyone does not litter equally.

I would be surprised if this was any deeper than people being lazy. Some people aren&#x27;t so they don&#x27;t mind holding onto their trash on the way to the trash can. Most people are. Some are guilty about being too lazy to uphold good manners they learnt they should have. Some had lazy parents who didn&#x27;t teach them any.

I have wondered if its not a deliberate act at all. It seems more subconscious, learned behavior, like people who randomly steal things, or drive overly aggressive. It&#x27;s all baked into their psyche.

Some people are just evil.<p>I have found a broken lead motorbike battery in a watery ditch near the farm of my brother. When you have fields and see the shit people throw on the land - just because its cheaper then garbage-dump. Only socialized garbage dispossal works. Its goto be cheap, instant, everywhere- else..<p>Biggest pigs are construction companys (painters) and restaurants (had somebody dump a truck-load of old kepab-meat). You have no recourse.<p>Also highly problematic are plants from gardens. People buy exotic plants, that grow beyond all excpectations, trim them and throw the &quot;compost heap&quot; trash into the forrest. Where it takes root again and things go wild.<p>Once its reported, the bill to clean that up goes to the landowner.<p>Also fun - new building material dumps - stryofoam and brick mixed- dumped in the wilderness and if found by officals, the landowner goto dig it all up and disposse it. Its incredibble how fewfarmers murder people.

The vast majority of litter in my area is from the homeless population.<p>They receive ‘donations’ from well intentioned people, usually in the form of items wrapped in single use plastics. Those wrappers are simply discarded on site. None of them use a dumpster, even if in walking distance.<p>There are several ‘good’ members of the population who want out, but have mental issues (I speak to and help personally), but the lion share is drug users with no desire except to use, and while angry about their situation, that is less important than to use.<p>I’m active in trying to provide real help as it’s something I’m passionate about. My advice is please don’t give anyone a single use plastic, please paper wrappers only. Remind them your help is conditional on them throwing the trash away and you’ll be back to check for the wrapper.<p>Please PLEASE don’t hand homeless cash donations, this hours straight to the local dealers. This drives up policing cost when they become violent or have to perform wellness checks, and they inevitably wind up in the ER for OD or wandering into traffic, driving up healthcare costs since they simply leave and never pay, using it as s convenient in demand shelter. If you do have cash, donate it to your local mission. If the homeless person demands cash, tell them you sent your money there.

I live rurally where the only traffic is a few locals, and then a bunch of suburban people who drive 20-30mins to get out here in groups who haven&#x27;t adapted to norms around loitering and privacy - or littering. My property abuts a scenic corner that started to attract people over covid. Given it&#x27;s one group of recent arrivals, objectively there is a cultural factor in attitudes to litter that needs to be a part of integrating newcomers from urbanized societies who aren&#x27;t familiar with the conservation of nature. It&#x27;s an education thing, and unless you are from here or somewhere with nature, you don&#x27;t learn it. Living in opposition to the natural environment is practically the definition of being poor.<p>After going out and talking to the people about it a lot, I just bought a drone to send out instead and it has been less civil but more effective. The numbers are down this year, and the litter has reduced significantly, as the people who encounter the drone don&#x27;t return. The solution to litter is education and being forthright in your stewardship of the places you live, and recognizing that asserting norms is a constructive way to help people integrate instead of silently resenting and isolating them.

For a while I worked in an office “strip” — we had a pharma company, a CAD company, etc, and also next door to us in the biggest suite a company that provided some sort of CPAP machine services to the general public.<p>I was fascinated &#x2F; upset that the two parking spots closest to that place always had trash (which would blow around) — often fast food wrappers. the entrance was perhaps 10 yards from the parking spot and there was a bin in between, so 5 yards away. I’d see people pull up, open the car door, dump their trash out, then exit the car and head for the business.<p>Obviously there were more people parking there (higher throughput) than in the other spots, where someone would come to work and leave their car all day. But if there is a small n% of litterers in the population it felt (not scientifically) like this group had a higher percentage than the population in general.<p>This left me wondering since what the psychology is. Unfortunately this article didn’t really get into it despite the title. I grew up the opposite way (pick up litter as you walk around) so I find this weird.

&gt; The researchers noticed that people were more likely to litter if they weren&#x27;t close to a garbage can. The more trash bins available, the more likely a person would dispose of their trash properly.<p>100%. I always carried trash to the bin, but easily understand that there are people who will not bother taking trash to the trash bin.<p>Bins are half of a story, however. I _think_ it also depends on society. I live in post-soviet country. I&#x27;ve grown up in a small city that went from not so nice and litter here and there to clean, flowers around, etc. Well-being enabled much of that. But also people were tamed to it.<p>In southern Germany, I once stopped by gas station and just took my time to look around. My attention was brought by automatic washing machine were people step out of car and garage style doors don&#x27;t get closed while washing in progress.<p>Then on a nearby street, ADAC pulls over a car. Technician had totally clean dress. Then comes the garbage truck. The bins were totally clean. The workers had clean dress. The garbage truck was clean. Their attitude to clean&#x2F;tidy is on a super high level.

I live in the suburbs, where littering isn&#x27;t a matter of dropping something on the ground, but literally <i>throwing it</i> out your car window in preference to just leaving it on your own floor until you get home.<p>And I get my exercise partly through daily walks. At least once a week I take a trash bag with me and clean the entire street from the start to my house, a distance of just about 0.2 miles[1]. In about a week, that 0.2 miles (on both sides) typical gets a shopping bad mostly full. The contents are almost entirely from beverages with a little bit of other stuff mixed in. And of those beverages, a large proportion are alcoholic - beer, hard cider, those little bottles they give you on airplanes. Yes, people are making themselves some kind of vodka cocktail <i>in the car</i>.<p>So my personal experience is that the people littering overlaps significantly with people with bad drinking habits.<p>[1] I leave the part beyond my house to anyone else who wants to help.

I wonder what the correlation between people who intentionally litter and people who don&#x27;t return their shopping cart to the corral in parking lots is. I would imagine they overlap a lot.

In NYC at least, I get the impression that people who litter just don&#x27;t think of this city (or even this country) as their home, and it leads to them being nonchalant about trashing it. They&#x27;re just here to make their money and then go back to wherever they came from.

I don&#x27;t understand littering at all, and I seem to be physically incapable of doing it. I will hold on to litter until I finally encounter a trash can, and I&#x27;ve gotten quite adept at tossing trash in the bin from my moving bike. Having trash in your hand and just letting go, knowing it will end up on the ground instead of in a trash can, is a completely alien idea to me (though I&#x27;m not always diligent in cleaning up when wind blows my trash in the wrong direction).<p>&gt; The authors concluded that cleaning and maintaining a trash-free space is a prevention strategy to stop future people from littering. Making trash cans readily available will also reduce litter.<p>Thank you, Dr. Obvious. More and better positioned trash cans are obviously needed.

As an American, in my experience Americans just don’t care. We’re so “ruggedly individualistic” that there’s very little sense of a common good.<p>In Europe I’ve noticed things are oftentimes cleaner. Even the parts of Canada I’ve been in have been nice. When every American city is covered in trash it’s hard to not to make some sort of generalization.<p>Of course I’ve been to other places too that have had just as much trash laying around as here.<p>As dumb as it is, we need more easily accessible trash cans everywhere. You can’t make negligent and lazy people care. But you can make it easier for them to do the right thing. I don’t have a source but I heard Disney World has trash cans placed every X feet after a similar litter study.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kab.org&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2021&#x2F;05&#x2F;Litter-Study-Summary-Report-May-2021_final_05172021.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kab.org&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2021&#x2F;05&#x2F;Litter-Study-Summ...</a><p>&gt; Significant progress has been made reducing litter on U.S. roadways in the past decade. The Study estimates litter on America’s roads was down 54 percent since 2009. That decrease of roadway litter builds on the 2009 National Visible Litter Survey that estimated that visible litter had been reduced 61 percent between 1969 and 2009.<p>Where is the data that shows that it&#x27;s a non-decreasing problem? Or that the problem isn&#x27;t being dealt with quickly enough?<p>And if it needs immediate attention, why not talk about the kinds of remedy? Woodsy Owl had a huge PR effect and greatly raised awareness when I was a kid. That plus a healthy dose of in-their-face shaming stopped a bunch of littering.<p>For context, Woodsy Owl poster from back in the day:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;americanhistory.si.edu&#x2F;collections&#x2F;nmah_529340" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;americanhistory.si.edu&#x2F;collections&#x2F;nmah_529340</a><p>And some background plus an image of what I consider Woodsy in skinny jeans:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fs.usda.gov&#x2F;Internet&#x2F;FSE_DOCUMENTS&#x2F;stelprdb5193740.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fs.usda.gov&#x2F;Internet&#x2F;FSE_DOCUMENTS&#x2F;stelprdb51937...</a>

I find littering almost physically painful and I seriously thank Captain Planet for that.

This trail by my house is next to a restaurant. Everyday Hispanic immigrants who work there and elsewhere go off into the woods by the trail to drink modelo and corona, leaving literally hundreds of boxes, thousands of bottles, and the distinct plastic bags from the mini mart they go to because they don’t check id’s they don’t have. It trickles down into the stream and I’m sure elsewhere.<p>The property manager did a massive cleanup recently, but I have no doubt it will continue.<p>I honestly think they don’t understand the detrimental effect littering has. It’s like they live in the 50s and think trash is just clutter that sits and magically goes away.<p>I’m fairly certain they’re illegal because as said it’s always black bags from that mini mart and I’ve yet to see a bottle of liquor which would come from the gov regulated store. Liquor being the smarter option if you’re going to drink covertly.<p>I was so pissed about it I reported them to ICE. I&#x27;m 95% certain they won&#x27;t do shit. If you’re going to sneak into this country, don’t turn it into a shit hole.

I suspect the venn diagram of littering and people who do not wash their hands after using the toilet is a circle.<p>my biases may be showing

This is nothing compared to Guyana. Trash is stacked up on the outer edge of the ocean. Beautiful sea view. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=guyana+seawall+litter&amp;source=lnms" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=guyana+seawall+litter&amp;source...</a>

Side note: in Tokyo, one of the cleanest cities on earth, there are (typically?) no public trash cans on the streets; they exist in parks and in convenience stores.<p>My favorite saying from my dad: &quot;It&#x27;s clean <i>not</i> where people clean up, but where people don&#x27;t litter&quot;.

Is the title accurate? Does anybody <i>actually like</i> to litter, as in if there was a garbage can right in front of them, they&#x27;d rather turn and throw it on the ground?<p>I assumed that they feel it&#x27;s acceptable to litter, as in they&#x27;re <i>not</i> motivated to find a trash can rather than being <i>motivated</i> to litter.<p>The article mentions &quot;chronic litterers&quot; but doesn&#x27;t go into any detail.

I’m torn on litter. On one hand, I like a clean immediate environment as much as anybody else. On the other hand, throwing it in the trash is just hiding the problem. The garbage was still generated, and it still goes <i>somewhere</i>. If we were forced to confront the sheer amount of garbage we produce, maybe we would be compelled to produce less. But ah well… out of sight, out of mind.

10000 years ago, litter often contained seeds that could sprout into new plants. Perhaps this habit could be a vestige of those times?

<p><pre><code> &gt; People were also more likely to litter if they were in an area that already had trash on the ground. A person at a highway rest stop cluttered with cigarette butts and food wrappers was more apt to litter than someone at a manicured park. </code></pre> I wonder if this controls for the other confounding factors that will affect rates?

Here&#x27;s a related phenomenon. What&#x27;s up with people who bag up their dog poop, and then just leave the bag? Especially out in the woods? I see it constantly. They went to the trouble to bring the bags and bag up the poop, and actually made the situation worse. Bagged up it can&#x27;t naturally decompose, and they&#x27;ve added the bag as a piece of litter.