Why are Brits so prone to littering ?

[Salida]

I'm not asking for your litter horror stories - we all have them. I'm asking for your thoughts on something that perplexes me. Just why is it that Britons are so prone to littering (and the oldies on here will confirm, that we have become much more so) - why we seem to litter so much more than countries?

I think it's entitlement and selfishness too. And a belief that they're more important than anyone else. It's the same people who say don't tell my little x what to do, when you've asked him not to kick your child while they're looking on benignly.

I hate it about a certain section of British society. And before anyone says anything it's not about class. It's the same with people who leave posh hotel rooms in a tip, wee in the kettle etc. It's ignorant and embarrassing but I don't know who's going to change it. I wonder what their houses are like or whether they're only like this when not at home.

Read g today that the plastic waste is seeping into everything e.g. vegetables and fruit.

Think Covid has made it worse due to disposable everything deemed to be necessary

https://gov.wales/how-wales-became-world-leader-recycling

Wales leads the world in household recycling BTW. It somewhere in the top countries consistently. And it didn't do that with fines, beatings and shame as many people appear to favour

Good psychology and design. Including making it easy. And accessible. Are the welsh any less lazy, feckless, entitled and all the other words on here? Nope. It's governments job to nudge us into doing those things despite ourselves. Shame government is now trying to make us worse, not better.

@Chwaraeteg

Lack of bins.

Total bollocks. I have seen people throw stuff on the street right next a bin more than once.

I wish I knew the cause.

Its not Brits in general, its a certain section of society that have, imo, had really shit upbringings. So when they were kids nobody told them not to do it. We are British and I have never littered in my life. I'd give my kids massive bollockings if they did.

I was at a busy park today and you could see 50pc of people.packing up their rubbish back into the bags it came in (how hard is this?), including groups of teenagers. The other half left it at their feet.

Did anyone watch the news report from Turkey last night? I spent an hour yesterday picking up litter on my usual walk and felt that I had made a difference. Then I saw the absolute mountains of our crap that has been dumped on the streets of a Turkish city. All plastic meant for recycling. What can anything we do counteract that?

Entitlement. Quite happy for others to clear up their shit.

Because this country has too many wankers. Almost certainly the same wankers who will tell you what a great country the UK is and how we should be proud to live here.

In the past you could make money buy selling cans / bottles / cardboard / plastic bags to your local shop. Tailors would also take old clothes to reuse the materials .Can’t do that now so there’s no incentive.

Even if other countries are also bad, it's still valid to wonder why the UK think it's okay.

One way we are different is that we have a lot more people who think it's acceptable to eat on the go, than a lot of other countries, where it's not really the done thing to walk along sausage roll in one hand, coke in the other, chewing and shedding crumbs and litter.

If we started to see eating as a social or important thing, instead of as grab a sandwich and constant snacks - wherever, whenever- we might have people seeing the tidying up as integral to the larger dining experience.

I've mainly seen this discussed as an obesity problem, but if dealing with our approach to food also helped our attitude to the wrappers, win win.

We were told in the 80s whilst at school that eating in the street was unacceptable especially when in uniform.

I wouldn't do it unless it was a picnic or I could sit somewhere

Good psychology and design. Including making it easy. And accessible

Nope. They walk past the bin to drop it on the floor..They throw it out of the car window when it's just as easy to put it in the bin when they get home. They put mattresses outside someone's front gate when the council will come and pick it up for a very small fee. And people wee in kettles when there's an en suite loo because they can't be arsed to move 5m.

Anyone who is so lazy they can carry their stuff in a plastic bag to the park but then not manage to pack up their rubbish in a plastic bag and take it home is ignorant, bone idle and entitled.

I work in a secondary school. After break and lunch times the cleaning team go around and pick up the litter. The corridors and stairwells are completely covered in bottles, wrappers, actual food.

Teaching the children to pick it up themselves or even to use a bin in the first place is just not considered a priority. It’s all about exam results. Pastoral time is all about LGBT, anti-racism, period poverty etc. which are all considered more important.

The school leaders are under huge pressure from the academy trust to show that behaviour is getting better. The evidence that behaviour is getting better is that numbers of detentions and exclusions are going down - therefore there’s pressure on teaching staff not to give out detentions. If you gave a detention to someone for dropping litter, YOU would called in by SLT for ‘a word about behaviour management’ and the litterer would have their detention cancelled. It is complete madness.

I'm a Bournemouth local so have seen several discussions about littering in the last few days. The most prominent reason seems to be "if there aren't bins, why should I carry my rubbish?" and "I pay tax for someone to clean it up". Translated: they're entitled, dirty pigs with no regard for anyone but themselves.

I expect people retort that if you generate rubbish it Is your responsibility to deal with it sensibly and not leave it for someone else but probably goes over their head

@OhhhPeee

Are the school not meant to teach about caring for the planet, thought climate change was a hot topic?

Too many people eating takeaways in the street who are too lazy to find a bin to drop the cartons into. We need to move away from eating in the street. Yes, occasionally someone might need to eat a sandwich on the move, but it shouldn't be the norm for endless snacks to be consumed as people walk about.

@Letthemysterybe - ever been to Vienna or anywhere in Austria, if not I suggest a visit. Saying there are worse places than Britain maybe true but there are plenty of countries that are better.

There are plenty of bins at Bournemouth beach
, The problem is the public don't use them.

@Ohhpeee when I was at school the pupils had to pick up the litter. It went in pairs, through the register each class, in turn throughout the year.the nominated cleaners were named each day at assembly and they did the job. The school was as rough as hell but no one ducked their turn.

Timesdone Fri 26-Jun-20 18:23:15
@Ohhpeee when I was at school the pupils had to pick up the litter

When I was at school (long time ago), pupils were never required to pick up litter - EVER .
Because there wasn't any - I just don't remember it ever being an issue.

Same here. Litter wasn’t as issue where I went to school. We sat and ate like civilised human beings and were supervised by teachers! If you dropped something, you picked it up! Or cleaned it up. We also had dining monitors on each table. Cafeterias don’t tend to help with table manners of good behaviour.

So this really caught my interst, and because I am a total nerd I looked up the scientific papers that researched why people litter. So broadly there seem to be a range of factors that are known to contribute to littering behavior. and Individual, social, and environmental factors have all previously been associated with littering. The bestliterature review suggested that environmental factors had a significant impact, including the amount of existing litter, beautification efforts, and distance to rubbish bins, and that the only significant individual factor to have any impact on individual littering behavior was group size, gender and age (being a young male in a large group was correlated with littering)....So you know maybe they'll grow out of it. In the mean time we need to make sure bins funny overflow, they are close to where people are creating litter and the area is well kept...

Because we are fuckin animals

@Chwaraeteg

Lack of bins.

That's not it. My work has eight bins in the car park and lazy gits still fling their rubbish on the floor. I've seen people empty the junk from their car and dump it.

Some people are just lazy and overly entitled.