{"id":8041,"date":"2014-03-04T10:01:52","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T15:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=8041"},"modified":"2014-03-04T12:19:58","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T17:19:58","slug":"litter-litter-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/litter-litter-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Litter, litter, everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/i> \"Loading\"<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"Litter\"Pop cans. Coffee cups. Candy bar wrappers. Fast food wrappers. Cigarette packages. Cigarette butts. Dog feces.<\/strong> Bags of dog feces. Flyers. Cellophane package wrap. Water bottles. Juice bottles. Chip bags. Beer cans and bottles. Disposable lighters and pens. Cardboard beer boxes. Discarded newspapers and junk mail. Plastic grocery bags.<\/p>\n

I just don’t get littering. I’ve never gotten littering.<\/em><\/p>\n

These are just some of the items I’ve seen stuck into snow banks and hedges in my neighbourhood, or dropped on the road the past few weeks. There’s always<\/em> litter, it seems, always someone carelessly and thoughtlessly dropping garbage on the sidewalk, the boulevard or street. The snow has covered up the older stuff. Come spring it will come out again. The streams and creeks will thaw and deliver a new load of garbage into our harbour.<\/p>\n

Why do people litter? Why would anyone pollute their own home? Dump their trash on streets and sidewalks they have to walk themselves? Why would anyone get a dog and let it crap on someone else’s lawn and not pick up after it? Or more confusingly, pick up then leave the bag of feces on the lawn for the homeowner to deal with. Or someone else to walk on.<\/p>\n

What sort of animal fouls its own nest? What sort of person would foul a beautiful town like Collingwood? Surely we all want this to be the best, the prettiest, the cleanest and most livable town in Canada. Litter won’t let that happen.<\/p>\n

Why would anyone – even a smoker – consider it acceptable to dump the contents of a car ashtray on the public street? After all, the public space is their space too: it belongs to us all. Would you do this in your living room? In your bed? yet I’ve often seen people do this downtown and in parking lots.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen people buy oil and windshield washer fluid at Canadian Tire, fill their car in the parking lot, then drive away leaving the empty bottles on the asphalt. I’ve seen people walk into local pizza joints, buy a slice, eat it and drop the cardboard tray on the sidewalk only feet from the place they bought it.<\/p>\n

I’m baffled<\/em>. And I’m not the only one. Anneli Rufus wrote in Psychology Today<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I believe that the proliferation of discarded packaging peppering urban and suburban America — strewn over sidewalks, streets, gutters and gardens rather than being dropped into recycling bins and trash cans — tells us something. I just can’t figure out what.<\/p>\n

Every day we each step over and around a slurry of discarded cups, cans, straws, snack wrappers, cigarette packets, and more – all dropped by others. Most of us pay no mind. Litter isn’t pretty, but it won’t bite. So over it we step, averting our eyes.<\/p>\n

But hey: Each of these items got where it is because someone was holding it in his or her hands and then let go…<\/p>\n

Public areas are ringed with recycling bins and other trash receptacles. Litterers are nearly always within sight of at least one receptacle when they choose, instead, to litter. And it is a choice. Something is in your hand; then it isn’t. It ceases to be in your hand. How? Reaching the nearest trash receptacle would mean only grasping the item a few seconds longer, two or three minutes at most. But somehow, for countless someones, that wait isn’t worth it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I understand somewhat that not all children have been taught not to litter, and that a child’s sense of social responsibility is often under-developed. Some of the garbage I see is from elementary students walking to school. Candy wrappers, chocolate milk containers, that sort of thing. I’ve seen them drop it, even while parents escort them home. Sometimes the parents even stop and pick it up.<\/p>\n

But coffee cups and cigarette butts – these are adults. I’ve seen adults at sports fields and events cheering their kids on in some game, then leaving coffee cups, discarded food wrappers and condiment bags on the ground at their feet when they leave. Usually there is a waste bin a few feet away. No wonder their kids litter; no wonder they don’t develop a healthy sense of social responsibility: they learn the lesson from mom and dad.<\/p>\n

\"Toronto<\/a>I’m sure every reader here has seen images of Canada Post superbox installations awash in the discarded junk mail people simply drop on the ground rather than take home and dispose of responsibly. A Google search will produce hundreds of such images, if not. Disgusting, I suspect you will say when you see them.*<\/span><\/p>\n

These are adults, not children doing this. Adults are supposed to know better. We’re supposed to be the role models for children: responsible, aware, conscientious, ethical. Stewards of the environment. Not lazy litterers.<\/p>\n

And I’m sure everyone of them who did it knows full well that littering is irresponsible and anti-social behaviour. So why do it?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A 2009 New York Times article<\/a> about the costs of cigarette littering<\/strong> to municipalities started with this telling anecdote:<\/p>\n

Andrea Scott says she would never throw a candy wrapper on the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cLittering is one of my pet peeves, and I always told my kids they\u2019d be in big trouble if I catch them doing it,\u201d said Ms. Scott, a 43-year-old financial executive, as she sat outside an office tower on Michigan Avenue in Chicago on a recent sunny afternoon. \u201cI see people throw stuff out their car windows, and I cringe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet she confesses that she routinely discards cigarette butts on the sidewalk.<\/p>\n

For her and countless other American smokers, cigarette butts are an exception to the no-littering rule. \u201cAren\u2019t cigarettes biodegradable?\u201d volunteered Libby Moustakas, a co-worker who was enjoying a smoking break with Ms. Scott.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Scott, like most other smokers, apparently doesn’t see her own cigarette trash as litter. Yet she’s conscientious about other types of garbage and is offended when others litter. And therein lies a cognitive dissonance I think most\u00a0of her fellow smokers and litterers share: they don’t see their own garbage as litter, merely as a somewhat bad habit or a minor inconvenience.<\/p>\n

\"River<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t (entirely) buy arguments that these people are just selfish<\/a>, stupid, irresponsible, dirty, ignorant or whatever adjective you want to label them with.**<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s more complex than just some instant (and invariably negative) judgment would suggest.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen caring parents do it. I’ve seen well-dressed teens on their way to school do it. I’ve seen dedicated joggers and cyclists do it. I’ve watched businessmen in suits remove coffee cups from their cars and leave them in the road downtown before they drove off.<\/p>\n

Don’t Trash Arizona<\/a> notes there are many apparent reasons people litter:<\/p>\n

Individuals can be influenced by a number of factors, including a belief that an item is not litter (such as a cigarette butt or banana peel), laziness, perceived lack of consequences for their actions, seeing litter already in a given area, or a lack of trash receptacles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Regardless of the reason – or lack thereof – for it, littering is a conscious, directed act, not an involuntary reaction. People choose<\/em> to litter.<\/p>\n

Robin Abrahams<\/a> wrote:<\/p>\n

It turns out that people — joggers, kids, hikers, homeless – don’t litter just because they’re lazy and don’t care. My box-strewn spot is what social psychologist Robert Cialdini would have predicted based on the “before” picture. The past decades of late night reservoir viewing have left the lookup with broken glass and small detritus. In “Crafting Normative Messages to Protect the Environment,” Cialdini noted that people litter in an already littered environment, and they refrain from littering in a pristine environment. Littering happens when plastic bags, cans and broken glass inform us that this is a place where the normative — usual, expected — practice is to litter. A pristine environment sends the message that we would be socially out of step if we littered.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The availability of trash cans doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on littering behaviour. A study done by the Keep America Beautiful<\/a> organization found people drop their litter even when a trash receptacle is nearby. I’ve seen them do it here in local parks: walk away from a picnic table and leave the trash behind when a bin is less than 50 feet away.<\/p>\n

\n