No Stupid Questions

There's no justification, it's part of a broken culture.

As a Czech citizen living in a city, I see it happening all around me. By far not for everyone, but for a lot of people treating trash properly is considered a fool's errand, virtual signalling, try-hard, you name it. This toxicity is unfortunately too common in the culture, and lot of people (including me) are just afraid or tired of being seen as a try-hard. It's especially "awkward" to clean up.

Obvious littering is one thing but I recon most of the trash floating around is due to "practical littering", where people, if trash cans are full, will just "neatly" place their beloved trash next to the can, kiss it goodbye and walk around as if wind does not exist. I'm probably too cynical but sometimes I imagine the same people going judgemental when they see trash caught up in bushes.

As for cigarette butts, that's just dumb. I don't think I've seen someone toss something like a plastic bottle or a bag on the ground, just like that, more than 5 times in my life, but with cigarette butts I see them all the time -- most often just before they jump on a tram or a bus. (I'm strongly against violence and bullying, but rationality aside, to be honest, there's a part of me that is wishing they had to pick it up and chew it.)

(Goddamn, about 2 weeks ago, someone must have left some balls of yarn outside, next to a trashcan, on straight street. I was walking to grocery shop and some kind of thread was unrolled along the pavement for, i kid you not, like 150m. It was bizarre. Could have been some serious TikTok/YTShorts material if someone wanted to make a "goody PSA".)

"Why do I give a shit? It isn't mine."

Personally, I think a lot of the behavior you mention is tied to a lack of ownership/personal investment in their community.

Unpopular opinion time: I think a year or so of mandatory service after high school would be beneficial for most people in this regard. Working for pretty much any non-religous social organization would be work and bring people closer to the place that they live and increase empathy for those who are worse off than they are.

I wonder if it would help to think back to the first time you littered? When I was 5 or 6, I remember eating a candy and not wanting the wrapper any more. It had to be someone else who saw what I did and pointed out that it isn't good if we all did this, because then the playground would be all full of trash and we couldn't play there. I was like, "Oh, I get it." But if someone hadn't explained it to me, I think the behavior could have innocently continued for quite some time. I grew up in a very rural place (northern Canada).

Littering and.......littering and......literring and.....smoking the reefer!

I've always wondered if it's those over clean types. People whose always obsessed with cleaning. They don't want to dirty their own environment with trash so it all goes out immediately

I think it is the convenience and there is no punishment for littering nor the reward for not throwing. Yes there is environment but it's like a collective thing. It's something else when a person would instantly connect that it's his/her action did that. There is also how they learned it from their peers or parents. Doesn't help when it's tolerated in the society. Personally makes my blood boil seeing someone littering, the most I would do is just pick it up myself while the person is there. Rather than making a scene and ask him/her to pick it up. That way I give shame to his/her behavior.

Equal parts laziness, self-centeredness, indifference, and a lack of object permanence. Once they don't see it anymore it ceases to exist, and since littering is faster once it ceases existing for them, it's somebody else's problem.

I've noticed communities with less litter have more public trash cans.

I think it's basically people just thinking "I want to get rid of this" and just drop/throw trash. Then if forced to think about it they'll just rationalise it with "It'll degrade over time" or "It's not that big of a deal" or "I'm creating jobs for cleaners"

"I never learned or thought about how long my trash will actually insist on existing and polluting my environment. I'm completely ignorant of how incredibly slowly plastic decomposes and how toxic it is for plastic to leach into the lowest parts of the food chain and concentrate on its way up."

"AFAIK, because the earth will take care of it somehow - everything turns into dirt when you leave it in the dirt long enough, right?"

"I'm just sooo ignorant, plastic will just break back up into little plastic fibers and the ocean can recycle it for us, like tree bark or w/e, right?"

That's my best, but still invalid, justification. What do I win

To the many comments, and my concerns to the tolerance of certain things, I would like to add that many people cannot efficiently nor autonomously handle (most or some of) their own frustrations and decide to vent them out in many ways, like throwing them to others, like when a simple cashier burdens a customer’s frustration for a (fair or unfair) complain, and littering is another way to do it, screwing “the systemic unfair world” or just looking to impact it in some way or another if they cannot handle a strong feeling of irrelevance. Consciously or not, is a coping mechanism that some people will use, while sometimes is something normalised to the point to be unconscious (people threshold for or concept of cleanness varies a lot).

tl;dr I really don't get it either.

I really don't understand how people can do it. I moved to a developing nation in the Caribbean. Everyone's livelihood is connected to nature here. Reefs, especially. Yet every local I have met will casually toss their garbage. I went to a festival on the beach and most of the locals were burying their trash in the sand just enough to keep it from blowing away in the moment. Some don't even bother with that pretense. There were trash cans in easy strolling distance, every 50 feet.

The roads and waterways are stuffed with garbage here. I live on a canal that connects to the sea, and have watched tour guides and fishing expeditions tossing plastic bottles, polystyrene food containers and plastic bags overboard daily for two years. These are the same people protesting dredging their flats and cayes near the reef, but inexplicably and deliberately ignorant of their own impact.

Also interesting to observe is the speed at which the nation transitioned from class and aluminum drink containers to plastics. Mt first visit here was just three years ago, and most drinks were in bottles that were clearly recycled. Laser etch marks, rubbing from other bottles, etc. Now its all plastic. There's a national ban on single use plastics, but it isn't enforced, and it all ends up in the water and in the ground.

When I first witnessed the ghastly indifference of everyone here regarding proper disposal of garbage, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was like watching a bunch of five year-old kids, the way they shamelessly toss their trash to the wind.

Why do people litter? For convenience. No story, justification, or self-reflection needed.

Cigarette butts really anger me. It's a sign of entitlement that I hate. The person knows it's smelly and disgusting, so they get it as far away from their person or car without a second thought.

I can be judgemental about it because I smoked for over 20 years. I kept a ziplock bag on me (kind of like you would for dog poop when walking your dog) and would keep em in there until I could find a trash can. The ashtray in my car was also used instead of throwing them out the window.

Now that I've quit the habit, I notice it even more. It's awful. My father and mother in law throw their butts on our lawn literally every time they come over, even though they are fully aware that we don't smoke. When I put a coffee can on the front porch and let them know that's where they should throw them, they looked at ME like I was the rude one.

Judge em hard. Cigarette smokers have very little space for other people in their world.

First, and I can't believe I'm saying this, I think you should be just a tad bit MORE judgemental. Making excuses for people's bad behavior is a bit like good people doing nothing and allowing evil to take over. You're passively condoning the activity.

Second, the acceptable amount of littering is zero, not a cigarette butt is ok. I dropped my car off to be repaired and walked to work from there. You know what I saw along my walk. Thousands of cigarette butts. You don't really see them from a car, but you sure see them on foot.

Third, I'm pretty sure this behavior is just trash humans. There are very few, if any, justifiable reasons not to hang on to your trash until you get to a trash can. This is my humble opinion.

Story: I was on a bus once, another passenger was a guy with a big McD Coke. We got off at the same station. Here, each station has a trash can.

So this guy walks right by the trash can and drops his fucking coke right next to it. He could have extended his arm like 10 cm more, and the coke would have gone into the trash can. But he chose to drop it on the floor.

This was years ago, and I think this day broke my faith in humanity a little.

People - everyone, including you and me - don't think before most of their acts. And a lot of bad habits boils down to conditioning or lack of.

That's likely the case for littering: they do it without thinking, justification, or reasoning. "I got some trash, I don't want it, so I throw it on the ground."

Think of litterers like poorly trained dogs taking a shit on your sidewalk. They did it because they had to do it somewhere, and they're not trained enough to understand that there are right places and wrong places.

Common reasons for littering are:

• unavailability of trash cans (in a convenient distance)
• inability to pay for trash disposal (this includes transport of heavy items or a large quantity of)
• creation of jobs associated with trash removal (often including arguments that tax payers fund those jobs and as a taxpayer it's their right to litter)

Exaggerated are these issues by low social education fueling short sightedness ("out of view out of mind"). So people lacking the understanding that somebody has to pay for removal of that waste.