Do you ever drop litter?

When I was 7 or 8 I was walking to primary school with the children next door and their mum. I found a piece of paper in my pocket that I ripped into tiny pieces and threw into the air. A council worker happened to see this, he came over and told me off. Since that day I have never thrown litter.

I wish we could have a communal dumpster in our courtyard instead of the horrible mess of bags and bins on the street. The council refuses - will only allow those big bins for high rises. We aren't a high rise, we are a higgledy piggledy collection of historical buildings with no drives or back gardens and it's a huge mess. The bottles blow about in the road. The bins are too light and fall over in the wind. There are 16 different bins in a line at all times across everyone's fronts.

The council do impose horrible mess on people a lot, completely without any comeback. That is part of the litter problem - the actually mad bin policies of local councils.

Never. It was a slap across your legs offence when I was a child so I learnt early.
I think a lot goes out of car windows and also people leave empty bottles and food packets in picnic areas, parks abd the like. You managed to carry it there full but can’t carry it away empty……..

Us wombles want Keep Britain Tidy to rename themselves to GET Britain Tidy

6 months ago, the council went from weekly collections on both general rubbish and recycling, to fortnightly. We use the narrow 120l bins for rubbish. For a one off payment of around £40, residents could swap their rubbish wheelie bin to a 240l. The take up for this is low. Fellow litter pickers on the FB messenger group said about 7-10% of the residents down their road have taken it up. Yet they are fine spending £40 on two takeaways a week...

Cue residents putting general rubbish in street bins. We did have those 'big mouth' bins which you see in McDs' car parks. Been swapped for bins with smaller entry holes to prevent this happening. Also putting bags of rubbish by street bins is classed as fly tipping. Wombles use an array of different coloured bags and if placed by the bins, they are taken away when bin gets emptied. We use green, blue, red and purple bags, depending on council issuing them and some councils change them. The councils take any colour bag, not nickpicking yet.

"Even food which rots such as apple cores etc, can be a danger to wildlife I'd have thought as well."

@SomethingMorethanthis can you elaborate?

How is it different from apples falling naturally from trees?

@Sinkintotheswamp do you use an app called Love Clean Streets? Very useful. Sends the report to the relevant council.

I despise people who do this, and don't use that word lightly. Especially people who throw big bags if empty McDonald's waste out their cars. Who do they think is going to pick that up? To me, its the ultimate sign of a thick, anti social arsehole.

I spent the last two days coordinating volunteers for a running race in my city. We were in a large tent which had multiple, clearly labeled (compost, recycle, waste) bins at the entrance. You couldn’t leave the tent without walking past these bins on either side of the entrance. Ours was the volunteer check-in tent and we provided a variety of snacks & drinks for them while they waited. Multiple announcements were made for the volunteers to put their rubbish in the bins. After each shift, we were left with loads of rubbish all over the tables, under the tables, on the chairs, dropped in the grass just outside the entrance - crisp packets, candy wrappers, used tissues, toothpicks…

people are disgusting.

I can’t remember what happened to her. It was about 15yrs ago. I don’t remember her getting to the point of sitting her test though, I think I was waiting for her to get round to taking her theory.

Never, ever. It's slobby. Also I worry about birds etc pecking at it and it harming them

Indeed. I did try and explain to her that picking up litter would only form part of his role and it likely wasn’t the aspect he enjoyed the most! I hope I got through to her.

Only yesterday I was walking through my local town centre behind a group of four young teenage girls. One of them blatantly dropped her empty bottle of water which made a noticeable noise, her friend even called out her name and she just shrugged. I did say fairly loud “you could’ve just put it in your bag” but didn’t want to go too far as I’m pregnant and you never know what reaction you’re going to get!

Eurgh- hope she failed several times over.

Never. I've actually got a litter picker and a hoop to clear up litter. It's weirdly therapeutic.

Ope. If I drop something by accident and the wind makes an appearance u will see my 'running' to retrieve it- not a pretty sight😂

No. I couldn’t even drop litter as a dare, the thought of it makes me sweat!

When I was a teen and smoked I did used to flick fag butts though which is obviously littering but I never thought of it that way then.

People who throw whole bags of Maccys waste out of the window both annoy and fascinate me. I can’t imagine that level of ‘not giving a shit’.

Never. I'm a litter picker. There's three of us in our estate. I'll have a wander round later. I've got fly-tipping to photo and report too.

I politely bollock people for dropping litter and cigarette litter. Obviously, after a quick "will they stab or punch me" assessment. The smokers always give me a gobful of bad attitude when I point out they missed the ashtray but they can't out run me anyway with their lungs. I've got the council and community police team onto the office staff who smoke and drop cigarette litter (a £75 fine kids!) and it seems to have massively cut it down.

No.

I also pick dog muck.up. I wish everyone did.

The state of the roadsides in the last 10-15 years is a good reflection of the decline of the UK. It has been a steep downhill slope and it's getting worse.

My DH works in the countryside and had a report from a local to say they'd seen someone walk two wheelie bins full of rubbish up to a fence and tip it into an arable field 🤬.

Another thing I have witnessed though which makes me wonder why any of us bother to pick up litter..... A tenant farmer using council garden waste to spread on arable fields...this waste, as well as what we expect to be in tons of household garden waste included all manner of chopped up crap that people accidentally or deliberately put in their garden waste bins, you name it, I found it - immeasurable plastic, small pieces and large, gardening gloves, plastic food wrapping, penknife blades, scissor blades, broken gardening equipment..all spread across hundreds of acres of farmland.

Yes I reported to environmental health and no, they did absolutely nothing. Don't want to get the council in trouble now do we. How utterly, utterly depressing.

Conciously, no. I can't vouch that nothing's slipped unnoticed out of pockets/ blown out of the car. I'm the type that will chase anything that I reasonably can if I've noticed it making a bid for freedom.

I'll often hold on to recyclables for my recycling bin rather than ending up in a general bin.

I picked up a bottle the other day for my recycling. I suspect from the brand that it might have escaped from recycling collections the previous day rather than intentionally discarded.

I used to work as a cleaner at McDonald's 25 plus years ago. The lad who was responsible, among other duties, for clearing the carpark, used to regularly fume about the "lazy bastards" who'd sit in their parked car eating their food, then promptly wind their windows down and drop the packaging out onto the ground. Yes, people like him and me despise people like them and your driving student. Idle, filthy sods the lot of them. Oh, and we had plenty more things to do than just pick up litter dropped by lazy arsed customers. Plenty. Couldn't say to their faces though, obviously!