Should we/I pick up litter?

[Mobbd]

I live in a fairly shitty place. No not there, there.

It's the posher, tidier part of the shitty place but there's still fucking litter everywhere and it gets me down a bit. I sometimes think about going out to clear it up. Nothing stupidly ambitious, just a couple of local blocks worth on Sunday mornings or whatever.

What holds me back, aside from bone-idleness are:

1. The council send someone out to pick up litter infrequently. Would my clean ways stop them from coming out altogether?
2. Will my picking up litter like a smug cunt make people feel bad/angry about themselves/the world in some way I don't currently appreciate?
3. Is litter actually a problem at all? Does it matter a shitty jot?

Anyway, back to my poo.

[Icehaven]

3. Is litter actually a problem at all? Does it matter a shitty jot?

Yes because rats.

I live in a block/complex of 5 flats and the occupants of two of them have no apparent concept of waste disposal. We have two wheelie bins per flat out the front which get collected every week, which unless you get through a prodigious amount of consumables is perfectly adequate for a one or two bedroom flat, yet for weeks after one occupant moved in he kept putting all his rubbish into small carrier bags and dumping them out the back where there's a small carpark surrounded by hedges. Needless to say after a day or two the rats and foxes ripped them open so there were quickly piles of litter blowing round the carpark into hedges, which months later is all still there, sodden and mouldy. There's also loads of broken furniture and an old fridge that the new occupants of another flat decided they didn't want when they moved in, again it's been there for months. I once watched the woman that lives there cleaning something outside using a spray bottle of cleaner which ran out when she was using it, so she simply tossed it onto the ground, and yep, it's still there. I'm just glad we aren't on the ground floor so I don't wake up with Roland and friends gazing at me in my bed.

[Brian Freeze]

Do it.

I feel self concious doing it, possibly for some of the reasons you mention but its worth doing. Dont let it get you down when it starts to build up again though. But carry on.

Your council might even help with collectjng what you pick up. Ive got the kids into doing it too. We got four black bags full between xmas and new year quite quickly and it looked fantastic afterwards.

[BlodwynPig]

MATTER OF LITTER FICKLE BRITAIN

[idunnosomename]

lest we forget

[poodlefaker]

Yeah, it's that sort of thing that puts me off, but I'm planning to do this when I'm retired. Get one of those grabber sticks, like David Sedaris.

Where I live is an absolute state - litter, fly tipping, crap everywhere - and it's not a shithole, it's a N.  London suburb where the council make it incredibly easy to throw stuff away. We have massive wheelie bins, there's a tip nearby, and they'll come and collect stuff if you phone them up. Arsed, mate, dump it on the pavement or down by the brook; if I can't see it, it's ceased to exist.

[Clatty McCutcheon]

I've picked the odd bit up in the countryside if its a particular eyesore, I'm sure it's not hazardous, and I've got a bag handy.  I also sometimes have to pick up stuff from our car park where local school kids seem to like chucking food packaging on the ground.

The council cuts in the last few years seem to have led to all the verges on roads outside town becoming complete tips.  Some of them look as though somebody's gone along emptying a wheelie bin's contents.  I don't understand how you can chuck plastic objects out of a car window knowing that they'll stay there forever unless somebody else picks them up.  Also, fly-tipping in lay-bys. Tyres, building rubble, furniture, you name it.  The other week I saw basically the contents of a house clearance dumped, including what I believe the boomers call a 'flat screen TV.' 

This is the kind of thing that turns me into a ranting old curmudgeon, but it pisses me off.

[poodlefaker]

If you have  to drive to a lay-by, why not drive to a tip? These people get to vote in elections.

[Dewt]

Clean the Queen's bucket right out

[Clatty McCutcheon]

If you have  to drive to a lay-by, why not drive to a tip? These people get to vote in elections.

I think business users get charged to use the tips, so if you're an unscrupulous man with a van, you can take cash in hand for clearing some rubbish, forget about paying the disposal charge, and just tip it out on a quiet road.

[weekender]

Some absolute muppet in my block of flats decided just to dump his rubbish outside the back door the other day.

I can understand perhaps not having access to the bin store - for some reason the muppet property management company decided to fit a security code to this - and so, perhaps, consider the option of leaving the rubbish outside the bin store but no, can't even be bothered to lug it the 30 yards to the bin store, just dump it outside the back door entrance.

The problem with their approach was that part of the rubbish they left was an empty Amazon box.  An empty Amazon box with their name and address still clearly visible on the label.

So, dear reader, I was faced with two options:

1) Carry their litter to the bin store, which happened to be where I was going anyway with my own litter;

2) Carry my litter to the bin store, ignore their litter, and put my litter in the bin store.  Then on the way back feel so incensed that I decide to carry their litter inside, take it up four flights of stairs (the lift isn't working) and dump it outside their flat.

It was there for three days, but I never saw it outside the back entrance again in that time.

[gilbertharding]

Yeah, it's that sort of thing that puts me off, but I'm planning to do this when I'm retired. Get one of those grabber sticks, like David Sedaris.

Where I live is an absolute state - litter, fly tipping, crap everywhere - and it's not a shithole, it's a N.  London suburb where the council make it incredibly easy to throw stuff away. We have massive wheelie bins, there's a tip nearby, and they'll come and collect stuff if you phone them up. Arsed, mate, dump it on the pavement or down by the brook; if I can't see it, it's ceased to exist.

Same around here.

And it's horrible that picking up litter seems to have been co-opted by the tories (ironic, as I think of littering and its big brother fly tipping as a particularly tory thing to do in the first place).

I've said it before - I struggle to see a downside to having the actual death penalty for littering.

[sick as a pike]

I've said it before - I struggle to see a downside to having the actual death penalty for littering.

It certainly enrages my middle class/Blue Peter/latent, ill-focused fury.  I live on a country lane and a few months back someone had clearly dumped the unwanted contents of their car into the road- fast food crap, cans etc, but also a car park ticket from Whitefriars Canterbury with the car registration number on it. I got in touch with the local council's litter nazis, in a self-righteous rage, and they took a statement... but then said the police weren't able to proceed as I'd not witnessed the actual offence.
But if I do see a passing Black 1.6 Vauxhall Astra, reg DL60 ***, registered in February 2011, I will stove in its windows.  Or impotently wave my fist while making a high-pitched screech like a ferret.

[hamfist]

I usually pick whatever I can up at the children's playground here while my kids are playing. I hate litter and I reckon there's absolutely no excuse for deliberate littering. I get almost as ragey about not recycling stuff too. The binmen are a bit shit round here and usually end up causing quite a bit of the mess.

[idunnosomename]

is litter actually bad for the environment. or just unsightly. no one has been able to answer me this.

i suspect a crisp packet rotting in a hedge is just as bad as it rotting in landfill. and dont tell me they're all getting hedgehogs stuck in them.

[weekender]

It's probably not that bad.

Some people say that plastic bags don't degrade for thousands of years, but when was the last time you saw a plastic bag from 1020?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Some cunt fly tipped a gutted caravan round my way not so long back.

[idunnosomename]

I've not even seen a Safeway bag since they turned into Morrisons

[Sebastian Cobb]

I've not even seen a Safeway bag since they turned into Morrisons

My mam's still got some of they green boxes that they used to do.

[Rolf Lundgren]

I've not even seen a Safeway bag since they turned into Morrisons

I saw one of those Walkers Crisps packets from the early 90s on a country lane only last year. I briefly slipped away into a revelry before realising my own youth had faded as much as that very same packet.

[madhair60]

cant be bothered so shant, bye

[weekender]

Yeah, someone else will do it.

[Jittlebags]

lest we forget

There was a mixup at the T-shirt printing company there. Originaly it said 'Jizz for Liz'

[idunnosomename]

My mam's still got some of they green boxes that they used to do.

oh fuck yeah. i think i finally lost mine in a house move couple years ago. but they were great. way more reuseable than the "bags for life" cunts just buy over and over again and put their rubbish in

[idunnosomename]

I saw one of those Walkers Crisps packets from the early 90s on a country lane only last year. I briefly slipped away into a revelry before realising my own youth had faded as much as that very same packet.

you should've picked it up and sold it on eBay

https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/253704525945

[Cloud]

I've thought about it and the only thing stopping me is being bone idle and generally forgetting the idea.

Honestly it seems a great thing to do, to care about your local environment rather than hoping someone else will do it.

Yeah we tend to hope the council will do their fucking jobs but they're underfunded and overworked.  We could take the approach of making jobseekers do it to earn a bit more (national service or whatever) but that comes with its own problems.  Or we could say well hang on, we only need them to do it because we don't, and we end up paying them via taxes.  So might as well pick it up ourselves.

But yeah easy to say, putting it into practice takes more effort.

[idunnosomename]

i lost some glasses when walking home pissed and ive been considering litterpicking the hedge I think I might have tripped them up into

[imitationleather]

you should've picked it up and sold it on eBay

https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/253704525945

I wonder if breakcore DJ Shitmat will be putting in an offer. Here he is showing his collection off to Holly and Phil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euxhBuQl7Zg

[idunnosomename]

fuckin hell alice beer

[Better Midlands]

I wonder if breakcore DJ Shitmat will be putting in an offer. Here he is showing his collection off to Holly and Phil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euxhBuQl7Zg

Hey kids, do you want to come back to mine and see my crisp packet collection?