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Why?
(thelemmy.club)
Only in Mississauga I find this disgusting behaviour.
Why are people just openly littering. It never used to be like this. What happened ?
I assume littering is partially cultural (not everyone is raised to think littering is wrong) and also partially about opportunity (what reasonable alternatives did people have for waste disposal).
In terms of culture, you have to get them while they're young, with propaganda designed for children, like Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street.
In terms of opportunity: maybe when ordering a new drink, people are running out of free cup holders in their car and need to dispose of their morning coffee cup to make room for the new drink they just ordered, so making a trashcan available might make the most sense to reduce littering.
Sure, we can feel anger towards the individual litterbug (probably some of them know it's "wrong" to litter and could do more to avoid the need to litter - personally I would empty the liquid and then keep the trash cup in a plastic bag I keep for trash in the car), but it's more practical to address this as a social problem.
It's hard to credit that people who litter were simply never exposed to the idea that it is wrong.
I've watched young kids habituate littering - I do think it's partially how people are raised, what social influences there are.
It might be that it's viewed as a big deal or wrong by outsider authorities that are disrespected within the family and in-group, not as simple as never being exposed to it being wrong, it might be a matter of cultural place and values situated in communities of poverty and oppression, for example.
Not that this explains all littering, but I do think cultural aspects are relevant (as another user pointed out about how Japan does not have a littering problem, though who knows whether this is because nobody litters or because Japan invests more in street cleaning, or some combination of both - we would need to dig into that more).
If you every have the opportunity to visit Japan you’ll notice they don’t have garbage bins anywhere and there’s trash nowhere to be found.
I think it’s a cultural/societal problem. Not a lack of trash bin problem.
Agree. I live in the US where it's hit or miss to find trash cans out in public. If there is no trash bin, paper waste just goes into my pockets. Stuff that won't fit in my pockets goes into my bag until I get home. The places I have lived, just about my whole life, are full of fucking litter, and it pissed me off so much I refuse to litter. I caught one neighbor throw trash on the ground in front of her yard. I said, "This is your home, why are you throwing trash where you live? Don't you want your house to look nice?" Her response was, "I don't care, the state is paying the rent." I would say in this instance it isn't about poverty, or getting government assistance, it's a person feeling no connection to the community around them, so they just don't give a fuck.
I think you nailed it with the trash cans. I have noticed there are fewer of them available lately. Are companies trying to avoid garbage removal fees or something?
You have to pay an employee to empty trash cans and put in new bags. They want to pay less employees.
you have to pay employees to go clean the parking lot after customers dump trash - and it's a huge pain to managers when they have to lose staff to the parking lot, usually there aren't enough people on a given shift to afford someone cleaning the parking lot
hm, as a prior fast food worker, I can tell you the company is paying for the garbage removal regardless - they're going to end up paying an employee to go and pick up all that trash, and a trashcan would be more efficient in terms of labor hours and wages spent, so you would think the company has an incentive to optimize the flow of trash to reduce costs ...
This is just my speculation based on observation, but companies are rarely well-managed anymore, and solid business practices like optimizing to reduce expenses and focusing on generating profit through selling valuable products and services seems to be outmoded.
Instead it seems like more money is being made these days with grifts and scams (like intentionally creating an investment bubble through hype and then making money by shorting and leaving the gullible people who fell for the hype holding the bag). Crypto has become more attractive than oil stocks, for example. Fundamentals are disregarded, and more and more companies seem to act in irrational ways.
It takes money to keep a decent manager in to handle all this for you. Of course, you don't pay yourself enough to do it yourself. So to save on money, the replace the general manager every two years or so so that the new generalamager wants to get everything done, realize they work for a shitty company, and once the burnout of trying to be a decent person in a snake pit hits they just replace you. Way cheaper.
I also keep a trash can in my car and empty itaybe monthly (I mainly throw away crushed plastic water bottles and napkins).
I started doing this when I realized nearly every public trash can at any fast food/breakfast/coffee shop/gas station was overflowing.
This builds a culture of IDGAF and people litter. Begs the question that part of the core issue is standardized reusable cups (8oz, 12oz, 16oz) maybe with a credit like $0.05 every time you use it? It would require a cup washing station.
I think most coffee shops would use your tumbler but idk what the process for cleaning it during your several coffee refills throughout the day.
It's also corporate culture to blame the customers for the littering. Tim Hortons produces a disposable cup, and people are simply returning it to those responsible for creating it.
Apparently Coca Cola is one of the biggest plastic polluter in the world and they lobby against deposit return systems because it's cheaper for them to pass the responsibility to the consumers. If some countries are choking with littered plastic bottles, maybe the consumers are dropping them everywhere. But maybe the ones producing the bottles could also be seen as being responsible for not taking them back.
yes, the suppliers design the system consumers operate within, and then victim-blame the consumers when they live within that system
even worse, anti-littering campaigns were designed and funded by these large corporations to distract from actual environmental disasters like rising greenhouse gases and oil spills that were causing the real harm, and which were more directly caused by these corporations
* Personal carbon footprint intensifies *
i realized my carbon footprint was actually quite small after stomping on the face of an oil executive, had to do it like 7 times to cover them!