Littering kinda of shits me to tears as well actually. How tricky is it to clean up after yourself in public?

Cig butts, to me, are about the same level as people who don't use blinkers. Annoying, but not a death sentence. And I very regularly toss apple cores and banana peels, which biodegrade faster on the street than they would in a landfill. But the thing that I can't understand is WHOLE MOTHERFUCKING BAGS OF TRASH - like, the entire contents of your fast-food bag - straight out the window. Of course, it's usually coming out the windows of cars for which having a bag of waste in the vehicle appreciably increases the value.

Littering is a filter for me. If you litter, I cannot be your friend. I see cigarettes going out the window on a daily basis, like notsnot, they don't bother me as much as other kinds of trash. Although they should because they are the worst of the litter as far as numbers go.

It saddens me to see our town's canals clogged with trash. The city is pretty good about keeping them clean, but there is an area of the canal at a major intersection and it's like a fast food restaurant exploded in it.

My sister and I were in the grocery store parking lot a few months ago and we witnessed a group of elderly people in their car unwrap their cigarette packs and throw the plastic wraps onto the ground. My sister was so peeved she loudly called them litterbugs. This was kind of shocking, because we usually wouldn't dare "disrespect our elders" or make a scene, but they were litterbugs and I guess she felt compelled to say something.

Recently I was in the McDonald's drive-thru. The guy in front of me threw his old plastic drink cup out the window. I honked the horn and said something, like, what the hell? Witnessing blatant littering gets under my skin.

Not littering was one of the ten things that was drummed into my head as a child. It bothers me. Keep your trash in your car, purse, and pockets like the rest of us.

I've mellowed on a lot of things over the years, but littering still hits a nerve pretty hard. I can't even understand why other people wouldn't think it's a big deal. It's one of those simple things (don't litter) that can make a huge difference in society.

Cig butts, to me, are about the same level as people who don't use blinkers.

I was sitting at a stoplight on a beautiful spring day. It was somewhat windy and I noticed all of the cigarette butts rolling around on the street and curb near me. It was several handfuls. And that was just one intersection. In one city. Since then I've noticed it everywhere.

From that point I became a militant anti-cigarette but person. Smoke what you want, but don't fucking litter.

I also hate hate hate cigarette butts on the ground. Smoking already pollutes the air; butts aren't just litter, because all the nasty chemicals wash out in the rain and leach into the ground.

Last night I saw a plastic Starbucks cup upended on the ground. Someone had dropped their iced mochafrothaccino and just left it there. I get that they don't need to mop the sidewalk, but is it really too much to pick up the cup and throw it away? Litter drives me completely bananas; I just can't understand it.

(Apple cores thrown in the woods are a different category, imho.)

Yeah, I fail to understand the throwing-fast-food-refuse-out-the-window thing, too. We don't get a lot of that here, probably because we have no fast food chains--the thing I see a lot of in the ditches here is beer cans. WTF, people? Because this place is mostly forest, any litter seems to stand out more (and irritate me to no end). (Sssshhhhh, don't tell them, but we also have no Starbucks. I was walking to the store last summer and saw a Starbucks cup in the ditch. "Fucking tourists," I thought.) The cigarette butt out the window thing is a serious problem in the summer here, as the whole island turns into a tinderbox and that burning thing could turn the place into an inferno. I confess to being a bit careless with that in cities (though I try not to be), but here I carry an old Altoids tin for that purpose.

I'm going to have to start carrying a trash bag with me on my walks.

notsnot: if you do pitch bio trash, at least make sure you get it well away from the road. pitching fruit litter attracts critters, which then become roadkills :(

I've volunteered to do road clean-up when I lived in the 'burbs and street clean-up in the city and the amount of crap that people toss never ceases to amaze me. There's a Subway, Wendy's, McDonnald's and a 7-11 all in a row on the main avenue in my neighborhood and you can tell how long it takes to consume the products of each of them by how far away you find the wrappers.

I hate littering, and London seems to be full of litterers. I was horrified at the amount of just plain garbage everywhere when I first moved here, but now I've learned to live with it which I'm not at all happy about. On a daily basis, only people who spit on the floor in buses disgust me more. grumble filthy fucken pigs grumble grumble

why would anyone throw stuff out on the side of the road?

Because it's easier than looking for a trash can.

Seriously, I see this all the time on my street. We're between a convenience store and a junior high, so we get a huge amount of litter on our street. We put out a trashcan, and it has made a difference, but I see kids casually dropping cady wrappers all the time. There doesn't seem to be any intention to it--I don't see them sneeringly sticking it to the man, or anything. It's just a total non-thought--trash is in my hand, don't want trash in my hand, drop trash.

Of course, that's how a lot of people go through life.

It takes 7 years for a single cigarette filter to decompose. I think people who flick theirs all over mother nature should have to live in a house filled with them for 7 years.

I'm on the same page as the 'I don't give a shit if you want to smoke - it's *your* body - but don't fucking leave your garbage all over the place.' camp.

I have a fantasy of picking up whatever I've seen someone just throw out at a stoplight and giving it back to them with a smile, saying "Here, you dropped this..."
Course, I don't do that because (1.) Ewww, gross and (2.) It could get me trashed instead.

Six months or so ago I was going into the drug store. At the same time, this woman pulls up to the curb (on the wrong side of the drive), and parks in the fire lane so she can run into the drug store. That already set me off. I mean, she was younger than me, and there's no good reason (except arrogance and laziness) that she couldn't have parked and walked the 25 additional feet.

Anyway, as I was coming out of the store, she was just getting back into her car. As she started to drive off, she tossed a (half-full) Slurpee cup out of her window. It landed at my feet. Without thinking, I reached down, picked it up, and threw it through the open window into her back seat.

She stopped the car, got out, started doing that ghetto head bob (all the skanky white chicks do it when they're mad; makes 'em look tough) and said "What did you do? What did you do??"

I just stared at her and gave her the WTF-you-fucking-moron shrug. This other woman was next to me, saw the whole thing, and said under her breath to me "What the hell?"

I don't feel bad at all about doing it (although I did think for a minute that I was maybe going to get beat up). I was telling the story that night in IRC, and someone pointed out that she was going to go home and tell everyone that some crazy bitch through a Slurpee into her car.

And that's the thing about litterers. They are, fundamentally, selfish narcissists who can't think past their own immediate wants and don't-wants.

And that makes me want to run over them with a garbage truck full of Slurpee cups.

mudpuppie: you are my hero. The end.

Awesome story, mudpuppie.

I always cringe when I see balloons being released in their hundreds for some cause or other. A balloon is just litter that initially goes up into the sky before it comes down again as someone else's problem, either environmentally, or to dispose of, or for an animal to choke on.

That was really badly worded, but my excuse is that I am tired from lifting weights and I'm also half-concentrating on Judge Judy.

Mudpuppie: you rule. My favorite neighbor at my last apartment became even favoriter this one time I saw her walking her dog while I was waiting for the bus; a car at a red light dumped some fast food trash out of their window, and she walked right up to them and threw the trash back into their car. Hooray!

During the 80s Brazilians (at least around where I lived - middle class) were pretty much litterers. You opened your candy, threw the wrapper on the ground, and never gave a second thought about it. I remember being awed when someone told me that in Europe or the US this wasn't just natural. Soon enough I was in the "put it in your pocket and discard it at home" front (there weren't many public bins at that time), but I was in the minority.

Some time during the 90s the zeitgeist changed, and the local governments started putting up trash bins (I guess it was because of increased tourism), and suddenly every now and then someone in a TV show littered and got a big talking-to. Littering was suddenly uncool.

Today most educated people there won't normally litter. Except in stupid cases, like big street parties with not nearly enough bins (and which will be sweeped later anyway), or abnormal cases, like on the beach, where you can just throw your beer can on the sand (public drinking is legal) because we have a lot of people that pick cans to sell for recycling. But littering is still way much more "tolerated" than in the US - people can still just throw a plastic cup on the ground sometimes without even getting many glares. And then a flood (because of clogged sewer drains) is an act of god, or the government's fault.

Here in WA there are some nice fines for littering, including one grand for throwing a lighted cigarrette. I don't see much litter in the highway or the streets, but then, I mostly see only between downtown and the higher income burbs.

Littering is deeply anti-social. It's a way of saying "It's okay for me to defile the landscape, because I just can't be bothered to take care of my own waste." It's one of the few crimes for which I would consider the death penalty.

no, I wasn't being sarcastic. at all. really. why do you ask?

And why is it that most litter bins have a halo of chewing gum on the ground around them? If you throw gum towards the bin and it doesn't quite make it, bend down and pick the damn stuff up, you lazy bastard. Gum chewing morons and smokers account for so much litter. Filthy little scrotes.

I stand by my friends through a lot (it's how I still have any, with my personality). I'm also a bit of a character in public (moreso than online, can you believe it?), so in some ways I ask a lot from my friends. One of the few things that will genuinely embarrass me in public is if one of my friends litters. It's never happened, that I know of, because I'd first call them on it loudly and then pick it up myself if they're not chastened. Like I said, I'm pretty much anything-goes, but some things I can't abide.

I often pick up random litter when I'm not in an explicit hurry.

I have a fantasy of picking up whatever I've seen someone just throw out at a stoplight and giving it back to them with a smile, saying "Here, you dropped this..."

I do this all the time in foot traffic, with a an earnest smile. My rationale: if I dropped something, I'd actually want it pointed out to me. I'm doing unto others!

Usually, they mumble something and jam the litter into a pocket. On the rare occasion when I'm walking with someone who litters, I do exactly the same.

Actually, I now have a back injury that makes it hard to bend down, so instead of picking up their rubbish and handing it to them, I just brightly point out that they've dropped something. A surprising number of them stop to pick it up.

I'm mightily impressed with mudpuppie, though. That much spine I do not have! Go, mudpuppie!

Thanks for the anecdote, mudpuppie. There are many times I've wanted to do that while riding; but a motorcycle doesn't lend itself to that. There's not much like the sight of a glowing ember being thrown at you on a highway in the middle of the night. I know you didn't mean to do it, but I'd prefer you actually didn't do it.

We've had dry conditions with Red Flag (i.e., fire) warnings for a while and you still see dickheads throwing LIT CIGARETTES out their windows. Fukken morans.

And mudpups rocks.

And, as a proof that metachat is prophetic, I just got a fucking LIT CIGARRETTE on my windshield while driving home on the freeway.

Unfortunately it was raining and I couldn't tell for sure which car it came from.

I'd like to do the "I think you dropped this" episode by putting said lit cigarrette into their pants.

Then fine them for 1000 bucks.

i've only ever littered when i was ANGRY AT THE WORLD.
THE WHOLE WORLD!
*slams soft drink into the ground*

Good one, mudpuppie! Like some others, I don't get upset about butts, but am absolutely incensed with people who throw other stuff away in the street, particularly when they are in their car and it is so simple just to throw it on the floor and dispose of it properly when you get home.

notsnot: if you do pitch bio trash, at least make sure you get it well away from the road. pitching fruit litter attracts critters, which then become roadkills :(
Plus, don't throw things away randomly when they have seeds in them, because they can cause as much damage as any amount of cigarette butts when they sprout and displace native fauna.