[olliej]

I’d be interested in seeing the correlation with the existence (or not) of trashcans. Huge swathes of commercial/retail areas in SF have no/few trashcans, and I would assume that there’s a limit to how long people will carry trash/empty containers before just dropping them on the ground

[Tharkun]

I've noticed a similar pattern in my neighbourhood. No rubbish bins and plenty of littering. When I approached the city council about this, I was told they wouldn't install rubbish bins because -- I kid you not -- that would encourage people to put their waste in the bins...

It's not uncommon to see less well-off people walk around town, putting a little bit of rubbish into any bin they pass. It's risky, because fines for dumping household waste in public bins are steep.

Disposing of household waste is quite expensive here, only waste in "official" bin bags is collected, and they're over 1eur/ piece. It's a contributing factor to poverty, and, in my opinion, to fly tipping. After all, why pay for expensive bin bags when you can just chuck your litter anywhere with impunity?

[roguecoder]

That seems like it would be easy to solve by delivering each household a minimum number of bags and then charging for using extra, instead of making the tax maximally-regressive.

[lozaning]

One of the things that I've noticed traveling internationally for work is how much this differs from country to country. You'll be hard pressed to find a public trash can anywhere in Suwoon, South Korea. Meanwhile there's a trashcan on every single street corner in Düsseldorf, Germany. Neither city had much trash.

[dboreham]

One data point: litter bins (public trash cans) were all removed from Central London decades ago because terrorists began planting bombs in them. Afaik they have been restored in recent years but the cultural memory of having to pack your trash home remains.

[tdeck]

This is the same reason there are so few in Tokyo: https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/05/trash-cans-japan-garbag...

[autoexec]

I'd heard this for ages, but Tokyo in my experience had a lot of places to leave your trash. Not the giant trash cans I see stateside, but small bins next to many of the vending machines which are everywhere. The streets were pretty clear of litter though. The lack of litter was still impressive.

[mikekchar]

You have to have a recycling bin next to drink machines. These bins are only for bottles and cans, though. You shouldn't put trash in them. Convenience stores are required to have trash bins, so that's the easiest place to dispose of something if you need to.

I don't think this has anything to do with terrorism, though. There is a culture of take your trash home with you. Even at work I was not allowed to use the trash bin for anything except work trash. Trash from my lunch, etc, I had to take home.

[kaybe]

It seems to be extremly impolite to put anything into the vending machine bins but the bottles you bought from that exact machine though. My Japanese friends were visibly uncomfortable at the idea. Same for any convenience store bins - only what you bought there is fine.

[lxe]

Tokyo has almost no public trashcans. And the crowds are significantly larger than SF, and it's significantly cleaner in Tokyo (at least from what I've seen).

[johnzim]

Absolutely. I think litter is entirely a cultural/social issue.

It might be a little trite but I sometimes think the Eastern approach of Shame is more effective than the Western approach of Guilt in curbing small social transgressions.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

Shame and guilt are really two sides of the same medal, aren't they? As in: guilt is evolutionary internalised avoidance of shame.

And, yes, it's an extremely strong mechanism. Most emotions are basically evolutionary implementations of government: shame -> criminal law, pity -> social safety net, etc.

Shaming is getting a bad rep these days, but it's essentially the least invasive method a society has to enforce common standards of decency.

[turtlecloud]

Correct. A trip to India def was eye opening in regards to the litter culture over there.

[kelnos]

It's more a culture thing in Japan. If you're Japanese, and litter, you will get shamed by passersby so hard that you'll never do it again. People in the US won't do that nearly as often, and people in the US aren't as affected by shame as much as people in Japan.

[lxe]

Maybe we should do this :)

[paggle]

You can't really use Japan as a model for any place outside of Japan. You can't make San Francisco's residents behave like Tokyo's any more than you can make Ruth Bader Ginsburg the left tackle for the Dallas Cowboys.

[lxe]

Both are big cities with people in them. Not sure why one can't learn from the other and vice-versa.

[mikekchar]

Japan is culturally very different. Every Japanese person is taught at school how to act in society. Cultural values are instilled there. In the west we believe that parents should have the last say on how to bring up children. In Japan, teachers have the last say. Teachers go to students' homes to make sure it is an acceptable environment for the student. If it is not, parents are required to take classes on how to be better parents. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen teachers calling in parents and yelling at them for hours until the parents, sobbing, promise to improve. One of my students was caught smoking and since the father was a smoker he was called into school. The vice principal blamed the father for the student's behaviour and insisted that the father never again smoke at home. The father agreed (and you know the home room teacher is going to go over to the house to make sure the agreement is kept).

That's why people don't litter here. For a test, I once left my change in the drink machine by the school -- a drink machine used by all the students. The change was still there 2 weeks later! I think the only reason it eventually was removed was because the company that restocked the machines took it. Probably only because they realised that it was an inconvenience for everyone having to sort out their correct change.

You just can't tell a city of millions of people to act like that ;-). It's a completely different culture and a completely different set of values.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

If the cliché is to be believed, there are some downsides to this level of obedience, such as stifling people in their most creative years, or really any opposite of one would expect a meritocracy to achieve. Some would probably consider your description of parent-teacher relations to be borderline dystopian.

I really wonder if those societal traits are necessarily linked, i. e. by being opposite ends of a spectrum of selfishness. It would seem entirely practical not to litter and also not expect people to mindlessly follow orders (in life and at work) based on the completely arbitrary hierarchy of age (/ gender).

[mikekchar]

Truly hard to say. I can say that I like the way things work in Japan. Even though I have no kids, people often ask me if I would put them in Japanese schools. I'd practically insist on it. However, I know several expats who hate these things.

One of the things I've come to realise is that one person's dystopia is another's utopia. I've often felt that living in Japan is a bit like living in a real life "Leave it to Beaver" or "Andy Griffith's show" (especially out in the countryside where I live). I see Japan slowly getting more and more Westernised and it fills me with dread. I lived for nearly 40 years in a society that I really disliked and when I moved to Japan, to my surprise, it was like coming home to a home I had never known. It's 12 years later and I am just getting more and more Japanese.

Japanese people, in general, also like Japanese culture. If you ask a Japanese person why they don't litter, I will lay pretty good odds that the answer will be, "Because I am Japanese". That's really the only answer. You're very unlikely to get an in depth answer about it being good for the environment, or a socially responsible thing to do. People really enjoy this identity. It's one of the reasons that there are relatively few Japanese people who live for long periods abroad.

I guess the thing is that most people are happy in Japan, in the same way that most people are happy in other first world countries. Some people are very unhappy, of course, but I can't really point to a country where that isn't the case. Some things are screwed up, but most things work very well -- just like any other first world country. I should point out that I've lived in Canada, the US and the UK for long periods of time as well, so I've got a pretty good basis for comparison.

Could there be a middle ground between how Japan works and how countries like Canada and the US work? Maybe, but I think you would have a lot of struggles to find the balance to make it work. You would also almost certainly lose very, very good things on both sides and I'm not sure that you would find very, very good things to replace them with.

[paggle]

A city can’t take any steps to make its people Japanese. Japan is a behavioral outlier, so the techniques it uses are not applicable to the rest of the population.

[blaser-waffle]

Let's be real, RBG is small and scrappy -- she's never going to be a tackle for any team.

Running back or receiver? Yeah maybe.

[Gibbon1]

I visited a friend in South America. The city was, and I just checked still quite clean. My friend said the reason was city took over the trash service (which got them in trouble with the IMF) and put out dumpsters every few blocks. Soon as it was 'free' people stopped dumping trash on the street. Two answer the question people at least there would carry a bag of trash a few blocks.

[maccard]

My city started charging £5 for a "bulky item pickup", which needs to be booked 2 months in advance (I just checked). Unsurprisingly, we now get mattresses/furniture dumped on the side of the street for a week.