A genuine question...

Mrs_Salad_Dodger

Shame on me I am a smoker 😞 but I take the trouble to knock out the end of the cigarette & keep the butt until I can bin it. Like all of you posting, I was brought up to bin my rubbish & if unable to do so whilst out I take it home & bin it. 

Don’t get me started on chewing gum 👿 

I have noticed that since lockdown has eased the noise emanating from various houses is getting out of control - although only when the sun is shining 😖 

Nargleblast

If I am out with nowhere to dispose of rubbish, I just have to keep hold of it until I find a bin, even if that's not until I get home. The mere thought of leaving it on the ground makes me feel stressed and guilty as hell.

GaleSF63

GreyQueen said:

What amazes me is that people who are very proud of their appearance are littlebugs. It's as if the very second they have finished using something, it has to be detached from their person. I stood on a traffic island on a main street one day, watching an immaculately-groomed young woman. She loosened her fingers and dropped her half-smoked ciggie as she stepped out to cross the road. If you'd accused her of going out without having cleaned her teeth or brushed her hair, I'm sure she would have been scandalised to be thought so skanky, but she had demonstrably dirty public behavioural habits.

Full disclosure; I also have one of my own litter grabber thingies and am not afraid to use it.

I live by myself and my flat is. well, anything but tidy and I can be quite lazy. However I've always been very careful to be tidy at work, partly so I don't inconvenience or cause upset to my colleagues, and partly to hide any suggestion that I am untidy.

However it has always amazed me how many people treat offices in the same way as so many people treat public spaces, leaving empty plastic cups and food wrappers on the desks when nearly every desk has a litter bin, particularly in places where the desks may be occupied by different people at different times ie they just walk away from it. Because I'm sure that they wouldn't behave like that in their own homes - most of them anyway. 

Bluegreen143

This horrific behaviour isn’t just limited to beauty spots like beaches. I live in Glasgow and often say to my husband that our city doesn’t deserve nice places as they are not looked after. We are blessed in this city with so many lovely green spaces and wildlife corridors and yet they are so often choked with litter, broken glass and dog sh*t. It makes me so angry particularly since I’ve had my little ones as I’m out for walks so much more and I want them to be able to play in the woods without picking up glass!

ginger_chocolate

Whilst there may be a lot of people who are just ignorant and don't care I suspect there's also a  bit of cognitive dissonance at play. People who if you asked them what they thought of people who litter would immediately say "that's awful behaviour I never do that", but one day, when feeling lazy, when something is broken or difficult to carry they think "Oh just this once I'll leave it behind. I'm usually really good, it's not as if I'm one of those *regular* litterers. And I buy eco-friendly washing up liquid so that cancels it out. I'm still a good person, nobody's perfect after all...." - but obviously large amounts of "usually good" people still results in a lot of litter.

Brambling

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised you just have to see the people who are prepared to fly tip and that was before the tips were temporary closed.  My usual journey to work is approx 12 miles cross country and there are 2 or 3 places which are favourite fly tipping sites I pity one farmer who often has things like mattresses dumped in front of a gate to his field.  The problem got worst after our local tip decreased the days it's open and starting charging or restricting vans and the amount you could tip in one go and then starting asking for proof you live in the county

maman

Brambling said:

We need to teach our little ones starting at preschool, there's nothing quite so condemning as a lecture from a four year old about not dropping litter and they don't usually mind who they give it to. I remember the Keep Britain Tidy campaign of the 70s as well 🙂

I think you'll find that schools do teach children to clear up after themselves. At every school I've been in, children were expected to leave the classroom tidy (putting equipment away, stacking chairs etc) at the end of the day partly to make it easier for the cleaners. Even the youngest pupils used to have 'tidying up music' played so they all joined in putting thigs away for the last few minutes of a lesson. Sadly, IMO it's role models out of school that are to blame including parents.

I think the lack of public toilets has been exacerbated by austerity and the lockdown has made us more aware. Public loos have been disappearing for years as councils cut services and rely on pubs and cafes to provide them. Fly tipping has definitely increased since free collection of household rubbish was stopped. Similarly providing/emptying bins and road sweeping has been curtailed. I think the increase in fast food/take away restaurants and indoor smoking ban has added to the sheer amount of rubbish too.

thriftwizard

I'm kind of linking the situation now to the awful tales told by friends who clean holiday caravans, flats & "villas", both here & in Spain. And the unholy messes that friends who have let their properties (usually only because they couldn't sell them, not because they're professional landlords) have had to clear up at the end of tenancies. Also the massive rise in fly-tipping. The "not my problem" attitude is clearly much more widespread than I'd realised.

helensbiggestfan

I am afraid the selfish attitude is indeed very widespread now... I don't fully understand how it's happened but it's definitely got much worse in recent years.  The perpetrators have neither self respect nor consideration for others.   It's going to take a concerted effort to reverse the process.  

There were pictures today of the mess left in Liverpool after fans had "celebrated". Shameful but sadly it's the same everywhere.  It must cost a small fortune in clean up costs, money that could be better spent on health and social care.  

It's time the powers that be got tough and operated a zero tolerance policy. 

thriftwizard

I'm about to sound totally fuddy-duddy... but I will lay some of the blame on the attitudes displayed in some of the "after-watershed" cartoons, comedies & computer games my kids loved when they were teens. They probably loved them because they knew I really, really didn't; I found the casual violence & nihilistic attitudes quite disturbing, rather than funny & I clearly remember watching characters just drop stuff as they walked. To be fair, my kids do seem to have turned out all right; I did always stick to my failed-sense-of-humour guns & discuss this with them (until the eyes started to roll!) but I know that some of my parenting friends had no clue what their kids were actually watching & how they behaved when they thought they were unobserved. But then, every generation despairs of the next one down!

I certainly didn't hover over my kids all the time - wouldn't have been possible with 5! - and you do trust that they'll learn what is & what isn't acceptable from society at large, to some extent. But maybe we all took our eyes off the ball a bit there?