[jetrink]

Last year I moved onto a street that had a ton of litter. I lived with it for about a month before I realized how easy it would be to walk a loop and pick it all up. For the first six weeks or so, I would fill two 20L garbage bags and by the next weekend, there would be another 40L of garbage waiting for me. Then something great happened: the amount of litter began decreasing. Soon I only needed to take one bag with me and recently I've been coming home with it only half full. Keeping the street clean has actually led to fewer people littering in the first place. It's a really great feeling to see such an improvement for so little effort and I would encourage anyone who enjoys walking outside to give it a try.

[cschneid]

I've seen similar situations too. It seems that people see minor social transgressions like littering as a percentage of guilt.

Already 20 pieces of junk on the ground, whatever, one more is 5% of the total.

Nothing there, My thing would be 100% of the junk on the ground, can't do that.

[KronisLV]

> Already 20 pieces of junk on the ground, whatever, one more is 5% of the total.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

> In criminology, the broken windows theory states that visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes.

The same probably applies to things like littering as well, somewhat.

[kibwen]

Broken window theory gets (rightfully, IMO) criticized because it tries to make an unjustified logical leap between crimes of a wildly different degree of severity.

I'm not trying to argue against the premise above that seeing litter makes people more likely to litter; in fact, I agree with it. Humans are monkey-see monkey-do creatures. The problem is that "monkey sees broken window, monkey does murder" is not how this works. It's a weirdly authoritarian way of thinking that suggests that criminality is not only objective, but a tidy spectrum.

[autoexec]

The flaw with broken windows theory was that it was used to justify excessive and abusive police actions. Cleaning up trash, turning vacant lots into parks and pleasant spaces, keeping public areas well maintained, and generally making it look like people give a shit about where they live really does make a huge difference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ02VLZ_Ey0

[throwway120385]

Another thing the police can do is try to solve problems beyond stopping lawbreakers. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_policing. These things really do matter.

[lostlogin]

Your link has criticism of the theory which is worth considering.

That said, it’s hard to imagine that excess litter collection could lead to minorities getting bashed by the police.

[poo-yie]

That's great! I was hoping that something similar would happen where I live. I think it has decreased, but still too much.

[theposey]

very cool of you to do this.

I am on the verge of doing something like this along a through-way in our neighborhood. I think I could probably get a lot of buy-in from the community.

[EricE]

broken windows theory