Anyone else AGHAST at the amount of rubbish on our streets?

[Rubbishwillruinus]

I live in Scotland. It's meant to be a beautiful Country, right? Wrong. Any car journey I take, I am aghast at the number of plastic bottles/cans/coffee cups/crisp packets, etc, that have been thrown from cars, and cover the embankments.

Took a journey to Livingston the other day. The place was covered in rubbish. And I mean COVERED. There was plastic crap all over the streets, and more shocking is that nobody seemed to even notice. Pic attached.

WTF is going on? Why do people think it's acceptable to just throw their rubbish on the streets? If there is no bin, take it home, surely?

I travel a lot, and rarely see this in other Countries.

This really pisses me off too. I can’t believe how scruffy people in the UK are. It’s like living in skip. God only knows what their houses are like.

One of the things I'd put in room 101!

I must admit, I thought this would be different in content...I live in a borough that is cutting back on rubbish collections and walking down a residential street is now just horrendous.

We are trying to get the council to sort it...anyway, I hope it doesn't result in more littering but I fear it will!

It would not cross my mind to do this, nor my adult kids. Where is this coming from? People never used to be such pigs, did they?

I live on the seafront, and people often use the carpark to eat McDonalds or Chips etc whilst looking out to sea. There is a bin. But, they open their car door, drop all the rubbish on the tarmac and then drive off !!

There are a significant number of dog owners too, who leave the dog shit on the pathways and the green that kids play on.

It's honestly driving me nuts!

Went abroad recently. Saw hardly any rubbish. Goodness knows what tourists must think.

I used to cycle 9 miles to work in ruralish Yorkshire. Mile after mile of crap in the hedges, almost literally unbelievable, endless beer cans and quarter vodka bottles which really does make me think about the actual amount of drink driving, the McDonald's crap, even tho the nearest one was 20 miles away, coffee cups by the million, then the creepy, the clothes, underwear, condoms, porn mags. It was like the road to debauchery. The one thing tho, one, single shoe. Here and there, always just the one! I know now, that there is a world out there, about which I know absolutely nothing.

I think that it’s become socially acceptable to litter and to tolerate litter. It’s like the empty building that is fine until a single window is smashed and deteriorates very quickly after that. The scruffy, lazy people prevail in the UK.

Yes, it’s disgusting. And when you move away from the U.K. and come back for a visit, you realise how bad it is. I’ve never been anywhere that has such a big litter / dog shit/ chewing gum problem. Absolutely vile.

Tony2 That is terrible, what a bloody shame. I know what you mean about it being almost unbelievable. And yet, I never see people throwing stuff from a moving car. Maybe it's mainly done at night time?

I walked for 5 mins along the seafront recently, and in that very, very short walk I counted 21 dog shits. WTF!!

I believe this is something we can change. People tend to drop litter where they see litter, because it's already a mess anyway.

My commute (I walk) used to have loads of litter strewn along it. So I walked along with a carrier bag and a litter picker, and picked a bag full up each day, and dropped it in a litter bin. It took maybe 18 months to stop getting re-littered, and I don't know whether it's because litter louts saw me doing it and felt ashamed, or whether there was less litter around so less got dropped, or people saw me doing it and did their bit too, but I probably only bother to litter pick about once every three or four months now, and my route stays pretty much clear

I used to work in a library. The volume of rubbish - mostly food and drink related - that people left behind was gross. You were never more than ten steps away from a bin but people struggled to make the effort and would leave their half-eaten meals, crisps, cream cakes and drinks wherever they fell. The furniture, carpets, computers and books were covered in food stains and the place was overrun with mice. How do people think it's OK to be so disgusting?

20 minute walk through a park to local shops was like a flashback to the 70s (so at least some people will be happy).

At no point could you not see litter (plus the usual garnish of dogshit).

At the entrance to the park some **s had dumped the refuse from their latest cannabis grow - 5 bags with stalks in.

Litter is the one crime for which the death penalty is completely appropriate.

yanbu
other countries have much less litter.
is there more people littering in the uk? or less cleaning up? or a combination of both?

Its annoying. Especially the broken glass beer bottles near where I live. If a dog stood on it then it would cause a lot of damage.
We need to do something before a generation of young ones think its normal

The councils need to do more
The public need to do more
The schools need to do more ie have talks about the environment.
And communities need to get together and look after there areas 🌏🤔

It disgusts me...I'm part of a community litter pick where we go out once a month and collect bags and bags between about 10 of us. The next day it's just soul destroying to see the empty pizza boxes and scratch cards lying around. I have a local business and take care of the area outside my shop, have installed an ashtray that I empty and still there are cigarette butts everywhere. My dc, 6&5, wouldn't dream of littering, an do exclaim loudly if they see someone else doing it!

When I was a kid in the 70s you often used to see the local street sweeper fella pushing his cart around. Can’t remember the last time I saw one.

So there is that, combined with a terrible attitude to litter (I work in a secondary school and the kids literally drop litter at their feet, inside or outside, despite bins being just a few steps away. When I shout st them they say they’re keeping the cleaners in a job, the little spoilt entitled shits)

Also more and more food and drink purchased on the go now. People can’t seem to wait till they get to their destination a 20min bus ride away where they could get a cup of coffee or a glass of water, they want it NOW so stop at Costa or get a bottle of water or a can of Coke. More rubbish. You just didn’t get people doing that years ago.

ommmward that is fantastic!

Litter really makes me angry, the lanes around here often have MacDonald's packaging dumped. I can't understand the mentality of people who can't just wait until they get home and put it in their own bin!

I think ommmward makes a good point about clean areas staying clean and that it is almost a mob mentality in that if there is litter is already there, what's the problem with adding to it, whereas if there is no litter it is glaringly obvious if you drop something. But then I have seen young people standing literally a step away from a bin just drop their litter on the ground. I despair.

When I was at primary school on the 70s I remember an assembly where our headmaster said that if we saw someone drop litter we should go up to them and hand it back to them saying 'Excuse me, you dropped this!' to shame them into taking it to a bin.

For me, littering is simply a signal that the litterer has no respect for anyone elses life, and the environment we all have to live in. They may as well have shat in my kids toys and pissed over their feet.

It's entirely preventable.

A litterer is simply pronouncing to the world in general that they no only don't acknowledge there are other people in the world, but that they don't care. It's a fuck you to every single person on the planet.

Death by being rolled over broken bottles, and discarded takeaway wrappers dripping with salmonella would still be too good a way to go.

The worst thing I’ve seen was about a year ago when I went for a walk at a local “beauty spot”. massive sculpture by famous artist, lots of oaths and walkways everywhere around it. I was absolutely horrified at the amount of dog shit bags literally everywhere. In every bush, in nearly every tree hanging from branches. It was absolutely revolting. I woukd rsther the dogs just shit on the ground as at least it would just go back into the earth. Instead god knows how long later there is a festering dog shit in a plastic bag at every turn. Why can’t peopel take their dog shit bags home with them if there are no empty dog bins?

Mind you, I went to Majorca a few years ago to a place where many of the locals had little dogs. They just let them shit anywhere, so there were dried dog turds every few feet on the pavement. So it’s not just us...

People are becoming scruffs.

Absolutely winds me up. I hate it. I feel like I'm living in a bin whenever I step out the door.

My town isn't too bad. We have regular community litter picks, and I know of a couple of people who have "adopted" an area and do that almost daily. We take a bag out quite often and pick litter up on the way home.

There should be no need for litter picking, but it does help if the sensible members of the community pick it up.

It has got worse and sadly is one of the things councils have really pulled back on. I have just moved and round me is dreadful, not helped by the presence of a secondary school. I am planning to do a litter pick in the New Year.

I have seen some dreadful things, a family opening the car doors and literally throwing a half drunk KFC milkshake type drink out. Everyone just stood with their mouths wide open apart from one man who called them a few choice names and the people that had their fish and chips on the beach and just left the rubbish in a neat pile on the sand. The tide comes right up to the wall. I chucked it in the bin.

Littering kills wildlife, either through ingestion or entrapment. Animals are dying a slow and unpleasant death due to this entirely avoidable thing. It's horrible and I can't understand the mindset of people who treat their environment like a rubbish dump.

My scumbag partner is to blame he chucks his food out the window if I'm with him I pick it up though.

Takeaway cups and cartons abound in my area. I was wondering if there would be a way to discourage it - such as introducing reusable receptacles for a one-off fee and charging a premium thereafter for disposable ones (similar to the carrier bag charge - you don't see nearly as many carrier bags caught in trees and bushes since that came in).