7mo ago

Help me understand littering

I consider myself to be the kind of person who can quite easily imagine myself in someone else's place. I don't know if I'm actually any better at it than the average person, but judging by the comment sections on social media and the conversations I've had with other people, I really struggle to get angry at strangers like many others do, even for things that anger is an appropriate reaction to.

This doesn't necessarily mean that I don't condemn their behavior, but that it doesn't provoke a particularly negative emotional reaction from me. I observe the world from a distance, and when I see someone acting differently, I generally can come up with a charitable story about why they act that way. While it doesn't usually justify the behavior, it at least helps me imagine why they're like that and reminds me that if I were in their shoes, I'd likely do the same thing.

This applies to cheating, violence, racism... Name a bad behavior, and I can come up with a story about what a person might be telling themselves to justify it. However, littering is something I simply cannot comprehend. I cannot wrap my mind around what a person is thinking when they're throwing trash on the ground for someone else to pick up. If it's something "minor" like a cigarette butt, then okay, I can somewhat understand, but tossing your McDonald's takeout bag onto the side of the road is completely psychopathic behavior to me. I don't think even the worst people in the world think of themselves as "bad" because they rationalize their behavior somehow. But if you throw trash into nature, you must know you're being a massive jerk.

Tl;dr: I want to hear the best justification for littering.

57 comments

I confronted someone for littering and with a completely sincere face they said they're creating jobs for the people cleaning the streets 💫 so does that mean murderers are creating jobs for homicide detectives?
- Same thing when I confronted someone about it.
  It's like people who dont return their shopping carts because they think they're creating work.
  No, you're compounding the amount of work someone else needs to do within a set time.
  They dont get paid more because you're lazy.
  Except littering is worse.
  
  I once convinced one of my aunts that leaving your cart out gives companies another excuse to raise prices again
  (not that I actually think that's true; i just didn't want to feel like an butthole for leaving our cart out)
- Creating a need is not the same as creating a job.

First, and I can't believe I'm saying this, I think you should be just a tad bit MORE judgemental. Making excuses for people's bad behavior is a bit like good people doing nothing and allowing evil to take over. You're passively condoning the activity.
Second, the acceptable amount of littering is zero, not a cigarette butt is ok. I dropped my car off to be repaired and walked to work from there. You know what I saw along my walk. Thousands of cigarette butts. You don't really see them from a car, but you sure see them on foot.
Third, I'm pretty sure this behavior is just trash humans. There are very few, if any, justifiable reasons not to hang on to your trash until you get to a trash can. This is my humble opinion.
- When I was a smoker, I'd roll the cherry off my cigarettes and carry the butt until I found a trashcan.
  People who throw trash on the ground are some of the most thoughtless and selfish pieces of shit in this world. They think that because other people get away with "bigger" or more noticeable wrongdoing, this little thing that they're doing isn't such a big deal. That's it. "It's not like I committed a murder, gaw!" Fuck you. You made the world worse for everyone else because you couldn't be bothered to be inconvenienced a little bit. At least a thief has the motivation of profiting from their crime. You just fucked shit up because there wasn't anyone there to stop you. Assholes.
- I didn’t think they were accepting cigarette butts but understanding those litterers. Cigarette butts are tiny and disappear after just a couple steps. They’re “no big deal”. Those things rolled have no concept how long they last nor how they add up.
- I don't believe in free will or the self. To me, there's effectively no-one for me to be judgemental of. Wether it be littering, racism or violence, these people didn't choose to act this way, they just do and couldn't have done otherwise. If I was them, I'd be doing the exact same thing.
  I'm just as non-accepting of their behaviour as everybody else. In my case there's just little to none negative emotions involved in it. Me getting angry about someone littering, to me, is the same as getting angry at the weather.
  And yes, I agree. If I were a smoker I wouldn't want to throw cigarette butts in the ground either for the same reason you just mentioned. My point was that I have theory of mind for such people. I can imagine how someone could naively imagine there's no harm to it. This just no longer holds true when we're talking about trash that's bigger; I can't imagine what they could be thinking.
  
  I'm pretty much the same way. You gotta remember though that anger is not a negative emotion. An irrational amount of an emotion is a negative emotion.
  An emotion is just a driving force of your behavior. "Angry" is mostly there for us to take action about unacceptable situations. Thus getting angry at the weather doesn't make sense, since you can't change it.
  However, someone littering is in a limited way under your control. Like you said in another comment, you can confront them and use your power for them to pick up after themselves. Saying you're not getting angry/irritated at all is the equivalent of not doing anything about it to most people. And I do think you're at least getting irritated (which is a low form of anger) at people littering, which is why you do something about it or post this topic.
  It seems to me a bit that you see any kind of anger, including being irritated, as bad, and thus show no sign of it/deny it even though you have it.

justifying anything easy for someone who thinks the whole world revolves around them.
“Why did you do <anti social / bad thing>?”
“cause fuck you i don’t care”

I think it's basically people just thinking "I want to get rid of this" and just drop/throw trash. Then if forced to think about it they'll just rationalise it with "It'll degrade over time" or "It's not that big of a deal" or "I'm creating jobs for cleaners"

Think of litterers like poorly trained dogs taking a shit on your sidewalk. They did it because they had to do it somewhere, and they're not trained enough to understand that there are right places and wrong places.
- do you mean as opposed to grass. Not sure how much dogs are trained to use grass. I mean I do bring them there so maybe they pick up on that and true if for some reason they seem to be starting before the grass I will pull them over but honestly I think they prefer the grass or other earthen areas over concrete. Basically not sure if that behavior is trained so much as instinct but I suppose it could be a bit of both. much training is about reinforcing behavior dogs do to begin with so I guess you could say that about all of it. sorry sorta ruminating this through my head as I type.

There's no "justification." It's laziness first and foremost. It is sometimes influenced by logistics, such as no trash recepticals being available. But that's still zero excuse, really.
The only time littering might be in any way shape or form understandable, it'd actually probably be called illegal dumping. If you're so poor you can't afford trash removal, you might end up resorting to illegal dumping. But again, much different than petty littering.
- no trash recepticals being available
  This is somewhat understandable if it's something dirty like a meat packaging dripping with marinade that you don't want to put in your bag but it almost never is. It's a bottle, candy wrappings, juice container, chip bag etc. It was assumeably filled with something when they brought it in but they somehow can't take it back now that it's empty and thus lighter and packs into smaller space. This doesn't make any sense to me.
  
  It's lazyness, most likely combined by the person just not caring about their environment (be it their surroundings, incluidng other people who have to live with the litter around them, or the environment). Most often than not it's less intelligent people or people who don't know better (like kids).

Equal parts laziness, self-centeredness, indifference, and a lack of object permanence. Once they don't see it anymore it ceases to exist, and since littering is faster once it ceases existing for them, it's somebody else's problem.

Common reasons for littering are:
unavailability of trash cans (in a convenient distance)
inability to pay for trash disposal (this includes transport of heavy items or a large quantity of)
creation of jobs associated with trash removal (often including arguments that tax payers fund those jobs and as a taxpayer it's their right to litter)
Exaggerated are these issues by low social education fueling short sightedness ("out of view out of mind"). So people lacking the understanding that somebody has to pay for removal of that waste.

I've noticed communities with less litter have more public trash cans.

Story: I was on a bus once, another passenger was a guy with a big McD Coke. We got off at the same station. Here, each station has a trash can.
So this guy walks right by the trash can and drops his fucking coke right next to it. He could have extended his arm like 10 cm more, and the coke would have gone into the trash can. But he chose to drop it on the floor.
This was years ago, and I think this day broke my faith in humanity a little.

Cigarette butts really anger me. It's a sign of entitlement that I hate. The person knows it's smelly and disgusting, so they get it as far away from their person or car without a second thought.
I can be judgemental about it because I smoked for over 20 years. I kept a ziplock bag on me (kind of like you would for dog poop when walking your dog) and would keep em in there until I could find a trash can. The ashtray in my car was also used instead of throwing them out the window.
Now that I've quit the habit, I notice it even more. It's awful. My father and mother in law throw their butts on our lawn literally every time they come over, even though they are fully aware that we don't smoke. When I put a coffee can on the front porch and let them know that's where they should throw them, they looked at ME like I was the rude one.
Judge em hard. Cigarette smokers have very little space for other people in their world.
- Yeah I confronted a friend for throwing one onto my lawn and they didn't seem to get why it was such a big deal for me. He clearly thinks nothing of it. In the army we were always told to bury them. It's not a perfect solution either but so much better than just tossing it.

tl;dr I really don't get it either.
I really don't understand how people can do it. I moved to a developing nation in the Caribbean. Everyone's livelihood is connected to nature here. Reefs, especially. Yet every local I have met will casually toss their garbage. I went to a festival on the beach and most of the locals were burying their trash in the sand just enough to keep it from blowing away in the moment. Some don't even bother with that pretense. There were trash cans in easy strolling distance, every 50 feet.
The roads and waterways are stuffed with garbage here. I live on a canal that connects to the sea, and have watched tour guides and fishing expeditions tossing plastic bottles, polystyrene food containers and plastic bags overboard daily for two years. These are the same people protesting dredging their flats and cayes near the reef, but inexplicably and deliberately ignorant of their own impact.
Also interesting to observe is the speed at which the nation transitioned from class and aluminum drink containers to plastics. Mt first visit here was just three years ago, and most drinks were in bottles that were clearly recycled. Laser etch marks, rubbing from other bottles, etc. Now its all plastic. There's a national ban on single use plastics, but it isn't enforced, and it all ends up in the water and in the ground.
When I first witnessed the ghastly indifference of everyone here regarding proper disposal of garbage, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was like watching a bunch of five year-old kids, the way they shamelessly toss their trash to the wind.

I wonder if it would help to think back to the first time you littered? When I was 5 or 6, I remember eating a candy and not wanting the wrapper any more. It had to be someone else who saw what I did and pointed out that it isn't good if we all did this, because then the playground would be all full of trash and we couldn't play there. I was like, "Oh, I get it." But if someone hadn't explained it to me, I think the behavior could have innocently continued for quite some time. I grew up in a very rural place (northern Canada).

"I never learned or thought about how long my trash will actually insist on existing and polluting my environment. I'm completely ignorant of how incredibly slowly plastic decomposes and how toxic it is for plastic to leach into the lowest parts of the food chain and concentrate on its way up."
"AFAIK, because the earth will take care of it somehow - everything turns into dirt when you leave it in the dirt long enough, right?"
"I'm just sooo ignorant, plastic will just break back up into little plastic fibers and the ocean can recycle it for us, like tree bark or w/e, right?"
That's my best, but still invalid, justification. What do I win ::: spoiler spoiler /sarcasm (I hope this spoiler works bc it's not working on boost) :::
- ::: the spoiler isn't spoilering, no.
  :::

I choose to believe it's mostly accidental. Either it fell out of a trashcan while the truck was doing pick ups or sucked out of a car window before the driver could catch it. Or any other number of circumstances that probably happened to us in one point it time.
Obviously that's not always the case but there's no point in my getting angry at imaginary people about it.

People - everyone, including you and me - don't think before most of their acts. And a lot of bad habits boils down to conditioning or lack of.
That's likely the case for littering: they do it without thinking, justification, or reasoning. "I got some trash, I don't want it, so I throw it on the ground."
- I'M AN ADULT!

Just to clear up any confusion - you can understand violence and racism, but not littering?
And if I do understand correctly, maybe it’s because that’s how their parents were, so they honestly just don’t think about it. My parents were the complete opposite so I abhor it, but I’ve known folks who don’t think twice. We’re still friends, I just try to gently remind them.
I do not have any racist or violent actual friends friends though. Like, I don’t actively pursue their company.
- you can understand violence and racism, but not littering?
  Yeah. I can imagine what a racist would say if I confronted them about it. They always have a reason for thinking that way and to them that reason seems valid. I can't imagine what such justification a litterbug would have other than "I just don't give a shit" so in other words; they know they're in the wrong and simply don't care.
  
  It goes both ways. Not all racists have the legitimate ignorance excuse - many just want a convenient excuse to have an “other” to blame their problems on so that they don’t have to take responsibility for their own failures in life.
  In a way littering is similar - some folks just don’t give a fuck, others were raised not to think twice about it and so they don’t. The second group can probably be educated though.
  There are ignorant people in every group who can be reasoned with and realize they’re wrong, and change.
  And there are malicious dickheads who just don’t give a fuck who their destructive behavior hurts in the process and will continue on their path to watch the world burn.
  The issues themselves aren’t always the main qualifier.
  
  But isn't the justification/state of mind for all bad behavior "I don't give a shit"? If they gave a shit, they wouldn't be doing it.
  The root justification for littering has already been said somewhere: someone has trash in their hands, they don't want trash in their hands because trash is disgusting to touch. It's annoying to keep carrying it around. Thus they open their hands.
  
  I can imagine what a racist would say if I confronted them about it.
  Yea cos usually rascist people have clean and thought reasons to hate people that they never met.

To the many comments, and my concerns to the tolerance of certain things, I would like to add that many people cannot efficiently nor autonomously handle (most or some of) their own frustrations and decide to vent them out in many ways, like throwing them to others, like when a simple cashier burdens a customer’s frustration for a (fair or unfair) complain, and littering is another way to do it, screwing “the systemic unfair world” or just looking to impact it in some way or another if they cannot handle a strong feeling of irrelevance. Consciously or not, is a coping mechanism that some people will use, while sometimes is something normalised to the point to be unconscious (people threshold for or concept of cleanness varies a lot).

I've always wondered if it's those over clean types. People whose always obsessed with cleaning. They don't want to dirty their own environment with trash so it all goes out immediately

There's no justification, it's part of a broken culture.
As a Czech citizen living in a city, I see it happening all around me. By far not for everyone, but for a lot of people treating trash properly is considered a fool's errand, virtual signalling, try-hard, you name it. This toxicity is unfortunately too common in the culture, and lot of people (including me) are just afraid or tired of being seen as a try-hard. It's especially "awkward" to clean up.
Obvious littering is one thing but I recon most of the trash floating around is due to "practical littering", where people, if trash cans are full, will just "neatly" place their beloved trash next to the can, kiss it goodbye and walk around as if wind does not exist. I'm probably too cynical but sometimes I imagine the same people going judgemental when they see trash caught up in bushes.
As for cigarette butts, that's just dumb. I don't think I've seen someone toss something like a plastic bottle or a bag on the ground, just like that, more than 5 times in my life, but with cigarette butts I see them all the time -- most often just before they jump on a tram or a bus. (I'm strongly against violence and bullying, but rationality aside, to be honest, there's a part of me that is wishing they had to pick it up and chew it.)
(Goddamn, about 2 weeks ago, someone must have left some balls of yarn outside, next to a trashcan, on straight street. I was walking to grocery shop and some kind of thread was unrolled along the pavement for, i kid you not, like 150m. It was bizarre. Could have been some serious TikTok/YTShorts material if someone wanted to make a "goody PSA".)

"Why do I give a shit? It isn't mine."
Personally, I think a lot of the behavior you mention is tied to a lack of ownership/personal investment in their community.
Unpopular opinion time: I think a year or so of mandatory service after high school would be beneficial for most people in this regard. Working for pretty much any non-religous social organization would be work and bring people closer to the place that they live and increase empathy for those who are worse off than they are.

I think it is the convenience and there is no punishment for littering nor the reward for not throwing. Yes there is environment but it's like a collective thing. It's something else when a person would instantly connect that it's his/her action did that. There is also how they learned it from their peers or parents. Doesn't help when it's tolerated in the society. Personally makes my blood boil seeing someone littering, the most I would do is just pick it up myself while the person is there. Rather than making a scene and ask him/her to pick it up. That way I give shame to his/her behavior.