[RobertRoberts]

There are plenty of places in the world where littering is not socially acceptable and happens less than other places.

What is the difference between these places? I think it's the people, not the material their garbage is made of.

[lostlogin]

That stuff matters, but of far greater importance is the volume of plastic made. We make too much. It’s not particularly hard to reduce your usage a lot, but I think that’s coming at it from the wrong end. The manufacturers need to be incentivised to do better. Carrot and stick, with the stick getting bigger over time.

[Liquid_Fire]

In Japan everything is overpackaged using ridiculous amounts of plastic (more so than in Europe, for example), and yet people don't litter.

I think it's important to tackle the issue from both ends.

[TeMPOraL]

> and yet people don't litter.

I don't buy it. See CydeWeys's comments around this thread. Also, having lots of people cleaning the streets only makes it look like there's little littering.

> I think it's important to tackle the issue from both ends.

Sure. Thing is, tackling it from the corporate end will be ridiculously more effective than trying to instill new societal norms.

[Reedx]

There's definitely a cultural aspect and it makes a huge difference.

http://japantravelcafe.com/japanese-culture-2/why-the-japane...

The all-around cleanliness of Japanese mega cities comes as culture shock to people coming from other big cities in the world. This tidiness is not due to millions of tax dollars spent on street cleaners and “Let’s-cleanup-our-city” campaigns. It’s not due to effective public works or community service. It’s due to one simple thing: They don’t throw their garbage on the floor.

Ever heard the rule, "pack it in, pack it out"? Or "leave the campground better than you left it"? That means not only do you not litter, you pick up any litter in case a previous person left something.

Teaching people this when they are kids makes a real impact. It has compounding effects over time.

That said, companies should also invest more in biodegradable packaging and using much less packaging generally. Since there will always be some litterbugs and trash that gets caught in the wind or falls off a truck, etc. It should be something we tackle from both the producer and consumer ends.

[TeMPOraL]

> Ever heard the rule, "pack it in, pack it out"?

Yeah, in religious congregations of a particularly controlling near-Christian denomination.

> Or "leave the campground better than you left it"?

Yeah, in movies. I hear that Boy Scouts actually adhere to that rule.

I've only ever seen these two rules applied in a pretty top-down fashion as tight-knit community rules. It's not something I've seen random people invoking in generic situations, so I'm not sure if it scales to the level of a city or a country.

[Reedx]

It's just like any other cultural norm. And Japan shows that it can scale.

Really, it's just a simple common courtesy. And I say this as an atheist non-Boy Scout.

[RealityVoid]

But there are obvious and relatively clear buttons that can be pressed in order to have industry at a macro scale stop doing something whereas the same buttons are not so easy an clear to press at a cultural scale.

And, nonetheless, I am of the belief that macro changes have perhaps an order of magnitude more impact that micro changes in this area.

[RobertRoberts]

1. There are countries where littering is "expected" and a normal part of society. (I've seen this culture in the US, they will dump their trash directly in the street)

2. There are countries where littering is both "illegal" and socially "unacceptable". (it's generally shameful to litter)

Which countries will have less litter if corporations are incentivized to change their products or make less stuff?

[RealityVoid]

I am not a US citizen but take offence at your statement that "littering is "expected" and a normal part of society" simply because you've seen someone do it. I am pretty sure you can find examples of littering in even the most strict of cultures. Especially when people believe they can easily get away with it.

[RobertRoberts]

Why do you take offence that I said "littering is expected" in some cultures? Is it untrue?

[NeedMoreTea]

Well, there's Singapore and...? That's about it.

Of course as well as extreme and draconian legislation, like banning gum, they're a tiny city-state. Yet Singapore employs vast numbers of cleaners and street sweepers clearing up - which surely shouldn't be necessary? Far more per-capita than any Western city. So even they seem to recognise it will happen anyway.

[jaredklewis]

Add Japan to the list. Littering is extremely rare.

When traveling, I've been impressed by the cleanliness of Zurich, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and several cities in Germany.

If as a society we can't do something as simple as not throw garbage on the ground, I think we have a very bleak future.

[NeedMoreTea]

Never visited Japan, but when I have been in Germany, Denmark and Sweden (nearest I've been to Finland!) they seemed to employ more cleaning - or at least more noticeably - than I expect to see in say modern day UK. I do notice, because UK and many other places are bleak in terms of litter compared to what I remember from childhood and early adulthood, in both extent and type. Nowhere has been nearly as bad about litter as the US though. I haven't visited for well over a decade so maybe they got better.

A vast transformation of the amount of packaging and type along with far fewer bins (who the hell thought that a good idea?) and cleaners, gardeners, and people mowing verges. All of which now seem to go by the benchmark "as little as we can get away with". Now add the disowning of any part of blame by business and producers as I mentioned originally. We certainly used to accept that some would always happen and employed enough to make sure the place stayed nice regardless, and the tidier places still seem to. We also presumed reuse far more often, and systems were built to expect that.

We also have a different attitude - more accepting of litter, though not as bad as in the eighties and early nineties when apparently no one in the UK gave a shit, and it was everywhere. Amsterdam, Stockholm and Paris have changed similarly, though none as much as here. Paris is perhaps worst of those.

[siruncledrew]

The US has a lot of variation in litter depending on where you are at, so YMMV. In my experience, go to a nice business district or more upper-class neighborhood/suburb - the streets are well-kept and generally low in litter to maintain a good impression of the area. Go to an industrial zone or lower-class part of town (i.e. off the usual path for tourists and middle-upper class people) and there's trash scattered everywhere. The trash just sits there ignored because, for lack of a better way to say it, there is no one on hand whose job it is to pickup the trash.

There are still places that have a "don't give a shit" attitude about litter, and people are also reluctant to go out of their way to pick up litter without incentive. In my opinion, there is somewhat of an expectation that addressing litter is the task of some third-party to take care of (e.g. government, groundskeepers, trash company, etc) - so it doesn't directly fall on the individual. In other words, "somebody else will clean it up" mentality.

In those places that already have a lot of litter, some people are assholes and just say "fuck it, what's an extra unit of litter on top of the pile". Other times, litter unintentionally gets scattered about from the wind and such, yet it's mostly ignored as to not deal with it. As aesthetically awful as it looks and environmentally damaging, people put horse blinders on to tune it out of their lives even though it's all around.

If I had to compare with other countries:

- Japan doesn't even have trashcans throughout, and the onus is on the individual to 'do the right thing'. (Gold Standard)

- Germany has trashcans, and individuals will generally follow the instructions for disposal. (Silver Standard)

- US has trashcans, and as long as individuals get the trash in/on/near the trashcan it's 'good enough'. (Bronze Standard)

- India/SE Asia the trashcan is all around you.

[CydeWeys]

I'm just leaving Japan after spending a week touring around the country, and I definitely did see litter. Not as much on the streets as in the US, but still some, and the beach was absolutely jam-packed with litter that had washed ashore.

Litter is inevitable. A lot or the time it isn't even conscious. You can just forget that you had set a bottle down next to you, and happen not to look back when you're leaving. Or it can fall out of your pocket or backpack unnoticed when you're retrieving something else. Or the wind can just blow it out of a trash can or vehicle.

[jgtrosh]

Why make your vision of human success hinge on a sudden global capacity to not litter objects for which there is zero incentive not to litter? Think about all the great or crazy human successes; do you think they were enabled by perfect individuals? We build a society to make individual failings obsolete, the opposite (upholding society through global individual rigour) is not sustainable.

[kwhitefoot]

And Scandinavia. Plus here in Norway people actually pick up what litter there is either just casually when out for a walk or in organized gangs set up by sports clubs and so on. The kommune (local council) pays for this to be done to clean up shorelines etc.

Britain is far and away the worst country I have ever been to for litter even though it is much better than it used to be.

Of course one thing that helps here is that every drinks bottle or can carries a deposit (roughly 10 to 20 pence sterling) that can be redeemed at any supermarket.

[titzer]

> where littering is not socially acceptable and happens less than other places.

It's great that there are places where littering is much less due to social norms. But it's not zero. People litter. Period.

To a first approximation, humans can be modeled as points wandering around on a map, and at each timestep there is some nonzero probability they will just drop garbage on the ground. This is true the world over, in every single country I've been, on essentially every hiking trail, no matter how remote or inaccessible. If you were to have a heatmap of litter the world over, it would very closely approximate the simple heatmap of where people have been. Just look at any stretch of highway. Unless it has just been cleaned up by a very thorough cleanup crew, you will find trash. And this is where people are riding around in vehicles that could as well just keep their trash in the backseat. People go out of their way to throw that shit out the window. People can't even get trash into a fricking trash can. It will literally be sitting on the ground next to a trash can.

People are trash monkeys. You can knock one or two orders of magnitude off the litter problem with education, societal norms, fines, etc. But people are trash monkeys, and whereever they go, they fucking litter. It's as inescapable as nuclear decay. It's just a function of probability.

[TeMPOraL]

> But people are trash monkeys, and whereever they go, they fucking litter. It's as inescapable as nuclear decay. It's just a function of probability.

When you talk about large populations, a lot of things normally considered individual responsibility suddenly become a function of probability. That's why I believe in many cases we should shift responsibility from individuals to organizations at the other end of a transaction.

E.g. if you know that roughly 5% of casino gamblers end up addicted and in life-ruining debt, and 0.1% of gamblers end up dying or killing people because of that, you can't open a new casino and shield yourself behind "it's the people who can't control themselves". You knew the probabilistic model, you used it to profit, you're responsible for some deaths and for ruining people's lives.

That's IMO doubly important if the probabilistic models has incentive knobs that you control.

[TeMPOraL]

Law and/or religion. I.e. well-enforced top-down rules. I sincerely doubt there's any difference in people.