Despite all of our recycle and reuse campaigns, there is still a fair amount of litter out there on our streets these days...
This is in part due to some council councils reducing the number of public litter bins to save money, but claiming somehow this is about making people more responsible - the idea being that fewer litter bins are supposed to make people take their litter home with them...
It's just that it doesn't work like that in the UK - people feel like councils SHOULD be providing public litter bins (damned right) and if there are none, then just leave the litter (subtly) somewhere anyway.
And then there's the fact that people tend to adjust to their surroundings. If a place looks messy, standards just drop fast.
Another factor that doesn't help public littering is the normalisation of packaging for consumables - I'm thinking here coffees and lunches and snacks - it is almost impossible to buy something these days without packaging!
Waste of the wealthy
Today's public waste is about carelessness and councils pulling back. When councils cut services, and individuals stop caring, nobody feels responsible for our shared spaces. Sociologically, this shows a fading of our shared social norms. If public spaces are treated like they're disposable, people will treat them that way. Environmental psychology studies continually show that when things look messy, it encourages even more mess – kind of like the broken windows theory, but without the punishment.
Litter is a visible sight that trust in society is weakening and our expectations for public services are shrinking.
And the government stepping back from public life...
The government seeming to give less of a toss over how clean our streets are is almost depoliticising the issue... it is a relatively small thing to provide sufficient public bins and pay people to empty them regularly - sufficient to meet demand for them.
But insstead we've got this roll-back and underfunding that means even keeping the streets clean has become individualised to an extent!
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It is also a demographic problem. Some people especially from 3rd world countries do not take care about avoiding pollution.
"If you import half of Bangladesh, you will end up like Bangladesh"
Thank you! Exactly one of my pet peeves. And no, this doesn't just apply to the UK alone. I've seen this pretty much everywhere.
It's so convenient to push the blame to the individual consumer / citizen. Carry your trash around with you until you get home. Even then, don't just toss it, but separate the paper from the metal from the plastic from the organic stuff, and better write your name on your garbage bags, or else you'll be seen as irresponsible.
Okay, but what about producing all the material consumers don't care about, but still get dumped on when buying stuff? And of course, if the city
can'twon't pay for keeping public spaces clean, it's all up to us to do it. (Actually, we the people have already taken care of it, in most cases, by paying taxes specifically for this purpose!)Finally, the group dynamic kicks in, which can be summarized by the German proverb Der Klügere gibt nach, which can be translated to the smarter one gives in. However, the extension of the proverb is just as wise, claiming Der Klügere gibt nach bis er der Dumme ist, meaning the smarter one gives in until he's the dumb one (i.e. he's the one being taken advantage of). And that is exactly how I feel, when I see myself forced to carry my trash home with me, passing street corners piled with garbage where I remember that a bin used to be.
I feel your pain on this,
it's cleaning up your own mess it's basic, maybe we need to go Singapore and use the fines to pay for more bins!
That's right, it is OUR OWN mess, not because we put it there, but simply because we see it where we happen to be. Instead of bagging it up and taking it to the dump ourselves, we may call the city services who are the professionals to do this. And if they won't do it, the alternative is to add our own trash to it, and stop considering it ours the moment we walk away.
The Singapore solution sounds like it could work... until people get tired of being fined, and stop littering. Then the city won't have enough funding for bins, incentivizing people to leave their trash on the corner, even with the risk of fines. If sufficient people do it, the accumulated fines will pay for more bins, and the cycle starts again.
The news about that GIANT fly tipped pile behind the trees on the side of a road in the UK just depressed me so hard. Not that flytipping is anything new but the sheer scale of it... A symbol of the decline, I fear
Fucking you know who shouldbe responsible? The people who put food in so much fucking packaging.
Britain is so going down hill fast.
Over here it's mainly since we got a bunch of immigrants; They litter and expect a German to pick it up for them.