To ask if anyone will admit to littering?

Sorry, I apologise

It’s not me that’s littering. So these aren’t excuses. They are valid reasons why a person might do it.

Complain to the school.

I have never consciously littered in my life and would (semi-seriously) welcome capital punishment for it. Absolutely vile antisocial behaviour.

I remember an episode of Mad Men where Don Draper and his family were having a picnic, and at the end of it they got up and shook their picnic blanket onto the ground leaving all their rubbish behind. I think it was meant to show how environmental concerns weren’t big in the 60s (or just how selfish they were) but clearly there are still people today who would do the same.

Never, ever. It’s just unthinkable.

I once saw a man sitting in traffic throw litter onto the road I was about to cross. I picked it up and threw it onto his lap.

My mum was a stickler for not leaving rubbish anywhere inappropriate. I can still remember being about 6 and getting into my mum’s bed one morning for a cuddle . Suddenly she said “ I don’t remember you bringing home your mars wrapper when I opened the door to you yesterday after you’d been out playing “ . She then sent me out to find it ( which I did) . I never littered again and i’m past middle age now.

Summary execution really is too good for people who litter.

That’s disgusting! You should have taken them with you

Not rtft so don’t know if they were joking, but anyone who chucks their rubbish under bushes is a vile, lazy disgrace of a human. ‘No bins nearby’ ffs take it home with you, you disgusting pig 😡.
On another note, why are there always dozens of dirty nappies left in makeshift carparks after annual events (like county shows)? Who are these entitled people?

Littering is disgusting, whatever it is. It's not hard to carry it until you find a bin or take a rubbish bag out with you and dispose of it as soon as you can, responsibly.
It shows a level of limited intelligence to me. It was also drummed into me as a young child, not to drop litter and I never have.
And chewing gum is one of the worst. Birds get it stuck on their beaks and starve to death. The amount of discarded gas canisters I see when I'm driving around is also horrific. That seems to have taken over from the people who used to empty their car ashtrays all over the road!
I'm absolutely baffled by some of the excuses on here! Pizza boxes breaking down, foxes causing it?! Seriously, if foxes are such a problem, secure your bins better! I have foxes visiting my garden, but they don't touch the bins as they can't get into them!
Litterers may want to live in a shithole, but the rest of us don't.

My husband is a "tradie", he was driving behind a man in a luxury car who threw litter out of the window. DH followed him, then threw the rubbish out if his van onto the man's garden, shouted something along the lines of, "I saw you lose yours so here's a free replacement".

We actually had quite an argument about this, I said DH was wrong because he a)couldn't be certain it was the man's house (could be visiting),
b) the guy could have escalated to violence

c) DH's van has signwriting including our address on it so with cctv etc he's easily traced and
d) ultimately DH also littered

5 million but interesting point. I checked the population density of Montenegro Vs the UK as the rubbish was so shocking in Montenegro. 47/sq km for Montenegro, 279 for the UK. I suppose when it comes to countries which are otherwise similar in a lot of ways, like the UK and NZ, population density will be significant.

Providing bins can make the issue worse as litter can either blow out, be pulled out by scavanging wildlife or be left piled up next to over flowing bins where it's more susceptible to being left.

The amount exposed on roadsides after vegetation is trimmed has been deliberately lobbed out of vehicle windows and is a depressing sight, both in itself, and as evidence of the way so many people behave.

Maybe it’s the three little birds version of the three little pigs the bird mum tells them to move out , one makes a house from a pizza box😂😂

It takes about two months for an apple core to rot away when dumped outside. Please take your litter home with you, whatever it is.

NZ has only about 3 million people compared to about 60 million in the UK and a comparable surface area, that's one reason we have so much more litter here.

But we need to act!

@OtherS interesting you think it's got worse. I wonder why that would be. In NZ people are more environmentally conscious generally than people are here (more interested in conservation for example, the Green party always gets a lot of seats in parliament) so I think that's part of it.

Ronnie Corbett had too much class to call people who litter utter cunts.

About 25 years ago I was eating a satsuma on the Tube. The floor was littered with rubbish and I put the peel down to join it. I got a huge roasting from some sanctimonious git sitting opposite me, which I felt was a bit unfair considering the state of the carriage, but it had an effect and I have never done it (or dropped any other litter) since.

Yeah, it was huge. Definitely in the 80s, not sure when it started or ended. I think that's when the man throwing rubbish into the bin logo was introduced. I'm sure I remember having it drilled into us at primary school, as well as loads of adverts and posters. The country was definitely significantly tidier a decade or two ago, I think the same's true across Europe. Everywhere seems rather dirty now :( I've not been to NZ but I do remember thinking Sydney was wonderfully clean a few years ago, they maybe had an Aussie version!

I might throw an apple core in the bushes but something like a soda can? No I just could not do that in a million years.

This is exactly me- 30 years ago I happily dropped fag butts wherever I went. I didn’t even see it as littering really- just a natural consequence of my having passed through a place, like shedding a few hairs or skin cells.

These days I take other people’s litter home with me. A reformed character 😇

At the weekend I was in the car, waiting for my daughters to finish gymnastics at the leisure centre. A football dad was parked next to me and as he walked up over the field he spat his gum out on the ground. (why do football dads always chew gum like flipping teenagers?) I said to him 'did you just flob your gum?' , he gave me the filthiest look for challenging him and said 'yeah'.

I asked him to pick it up, three times saying how revolting it is, that a child will likely step on it etc he ignored me the first two, and then he looked at me in the way that only a man can look at a woman challenging him and picked up the gum and instead of wrapping it to throw in the bin, he threw it further into the field. All because he got caught out. Revolting.

I felt sorry for the two boys he was with.

@OtherS oh so there was a Keep Britain Tidy campaign? I grew up in NZ and we had "Be a tidy kiwi". I was taught never to litter. It's much worse here so I wondered if it was the lack of a campaign but sounds like not! Where I live where was a "Don't be a tosser" campaign last year which is awesome but it didn't seem to carry on.

Went to Montenegro on holiday this summer and was shocked at the amount of litter everywhere. Absolutely disgusting. I asked a local about it and he claimed it was all the tourists. Certainly seems like people in some countries care more than others.

Regretfully we live in deep countryside, have assumed ‘food recycling’ was actually making meals with food approaching SBD?
how does ‘food recycle’ deal with stuff like avocado skins if not by composting?