Simply throwing their cigarette butts on the ground, emptying ashtrays from their cars in parking lots, sometimes even starting fires in their littering.

I don't know what percentage of smokers are more careful and not litterbugs, but the ones that simply throw butts out of their car windows always irritate me.

the ground but people ignore it.

But the enormous number of butts on the ground all over the place show how effective such laws are.

whenever i see someone toss something out of their car, that belief is challenged.

Bryant

can I say redneck culture about now? This is damn disgrace.

I wonder how many of the pickup trucks were blasting out black smoke to go along with the garbage their admirers were throwing around.

Even rap audiences are neater.

We were at the Lake on Saturday (Lake Erie) and found many articles that needed picked up and I would have except we had no trash bag with us. I think the area where we were could have been cleaned up in about 20 minutes with the two of us. You don't mention if you pick up litter but I almost always do especially when I walk my dogs since I have plastic grocery bags with me. In the spring my route takes a few weeks to get all of it picked up then it is just maintenance....I just can't stand looking at cans and bottles and cigarette packs. Since there is a Walmart and Lowe's on my route there are endless amounts of plastic bags that get blown out of their parking lots that I quickly fill up. One good thing about my "hobby" is I find cash once in a while...got a 20 dollar bill in March by the Lowe's. I like to think when people don't see trash they tend to litter less. Funny, have you ever heard of anyone getting cited for littering?

I'm with you. People just don't think or care. They think that when they throw something away that "away" is some magical place. Tossing garbage outside is not going to make it disappear. Everything thrown 'away' ends up somewhere.

Not all, but enough are. I live along a gravel country road that leads to a popular place for hunting (state recreation area), and watched a car stop and the occupant of the passenger seat lean out and place a half-full plastic cup of Starbucks Frappucino in the road. I guess that made him feel less guilty than tossing it into the ditch, like everyone else does. I went out and retrieved it and threw it away in my garbage can, as I do pretty much every week with fast food wrappers, walmart bags, beer bottles...

from an elementary school. Parents park on two sides of the house to pick up their kids. Everyday I sweep up cigarette butts, soft drink cans, fast food wrappers, occasionally a beer can or empty pint bottle. Parents empty their kids lunch boxes in the gutter, half eaten apples, drink boxes, sandwiches in plastic baggies. I clean it up because our gutters and street drains empty to the ocean.

Since children learn by example, I shutter to think what these irresponsible adults are teaching their kids when they are not parked by our house.

their dumped trash? It just magically goes away, it walks itself to the landfill, the trash fairy cleans it up? What is so fucking hard about hanging on to something until you can throw it away?

children learn almost from day one.

Maybe authorities should ban from parks, water-ways, open or public facilities anyone found to be littering.

Tikki

Every once and a while I see children "losing" things. I politely suggest that they have lost something. Normally they blush and fetch their garbage. Sometimes they react like rotten brats. Then I ask if their mothers are ok with their behavior. Then they get angry but blush anyway...
But then I live in Germany where waste separation is sort of a national sport

Huge bags of it, crap scattered everywhere.

Lady Bird and her highway beautification kinda stopped that.

These came out in 1969 just before LBJ handed the baton to Nixon:

They were the first stamps I ever bought at a post office

I think I must have an old family document with that 'un on it.

It's really a nice one--they should reissue some of these really neat looking ones!

bag with me, and carry it out full. It's amazing that anglers can carry crap to their fishing spot, but can't be bothered to carry it out again. I'm not sure what prompts that, but fishing, for me, is my opportunity to go into a natural area. I wouldn't dream of leaving any crap there. Others don't seem to care, so I bag their crap and deposit in the trash can that's always there on the way back to the car.

Amazing.

I never see trash in our neighboorhood, not even plastic bags. On commercial streets with divided roads, there is more trash.

In Minnewota where I live there is a statewide 'Adopt-a-Highway program in which a family, business, or other organization 'adopts' a stretch of highway and they pick up trash in the ditches several times a year.

I have visited my snowbird father in the winter, and not to pick on Arizona, but I see much, much more litter down there, especially plastic bags.

Oddly enough, beer cans are always part of that trash. Go figure.

Whenever I go up north to our cabin, I drive along our gravel road with the ATV and pick up trash and aluminum cans, usually more cans than trash.

I do think the littering problem, at least per capita, is less than it was back in the 70s and before. Do you remember the anti-litter TV PSA from the 70s that featured the Indian with tears? Guess what, he was Sicilian.

I see trash all over the place down here in the South, too. Especially in the rural areas. They don't have trash pick-up, and have to drive to either a landfill or a drop-off site. I guess it's easier for them to toss things on the side of the road. I also see a lot of tossing of stuff, mainly fast food containers, out the car window. Why they can't just hold onto it until they get home is beyond me.

We have the "Adopt a Highway" here, too. I sometimes think it just encourages people to chuck things out the window, instead of waiting until they find a trash can, knowing that somebody will pick up after them.

blowing around where I am driving. In the Twin Cities, there is a lot of 'bag your own' grocery stores (not counting Target and Walmart) and I think the clerks use mire plastic bags than the average person. When Aldi came about ten years ago tgat got us to bring our own bags on almost all of our grocery shopping trips, we just have to remember them.

A lot of the grocery stores have been encouraging the reusable bags, and there's at least one chain down here that will take a nickle per bag off your bill if you bring your own. Target does it, as well. And, all the major chains take bags for recycling. Aldi came down here several years ago, and I still see people who are flummoxed by the whole "bags are extra" thing. But, they're slowly catching on.

Some of the large Northern cities are initiating plastic bag bans, like San Francisco has. I think Chicago's goes into effect next year. I think they're banned in Seattle and/or Portland, OR, too. It's just a matter of time before we start seeing that everywhere, especially as the price of oil continues to rise.

A wrapper gets blown away by the wind, or you didn't realize that a trash bag was a little open when you threw it in the bed of a pickup. Accidental stuff like that happens.

I can also understand litter that cleans itself up. For example, pouring out the ice before throwing away a paper cup. The ice melts & evaporates.

But I don't get the "I'm just gonna chuck this beer can" litter.

... and onto my lawn. One of the reasons my house in on the market...

like paper cups, candy bar wrappers, crumpled pieces of paper. One side of my property has a school bus stop and the kids are constantly throwing their trash. There are a lot of problems involving adults, too, like graffiti on my brick wall, beer bottles, and even used condoms. What drives me insane are the shopping carts that people bring back from the store and just abandon anywhere including the sidewalk in front of my house. I'd put them in my car and take them back to the store but they won't fit in my small cars.

My side of the street has the sidewalk on it and it's constant litter either on the sidewalk or a few feet out from it to either side, all along the length of it. Kid stuff, all of it.

trash people had thrown there.

I get into these word battles with people I know that enjoy hunting, fishing, or just enjoying nature that don't understand how their actions help to destroy what they love.
We must be the most stupid race of "higher intelligence".

Most likely a lot of the trash blew in from somewhere else, unfortunately. I wish the government would pay for anti-littering ads like it did when I was a kid. They made a big impression on me. I think that would help.

I pick up beer bottles, water bottles, McDonalds bags, half eaten sandwiches, liquor bottles, etc. This is in an established, upper middle-class neighborhood. I don't understand why people are not only so disrespectful of nature but as well of their neighbors.

As a kid I was taught to always clean up after myself and to never litter. I guess that value isn't being taught today or is being ignored in the "me, me, me" culture.

I am also appalled at smokers. I see them all the time dropping their lit cigarettes out the window and driving off or even sometimes if they are walking. If I see this happen in a parking lot I wait for the person to go inside wherever they are going. I pick up the butt with a tissue and I smear the cigarette on their windshield and shove the filter into their driver side key hole.

I know they won't get it but why do smokers think the world is their personal ashtray?

ranges, whatever, thrown along the rural roads of Johnston & Harnett counties. It is very disturbing.

Many families do not pay for trash pick up, so when then want to get rid of their trash, they just run down the road and toss it.

When I first moved down here, I remember reading LsTTE in the N&O about all the "damn Yankees" trashing the state. My damn Yankee parents taught me not to litter. The trash/debris is stuff flying off of pick-up and construction trucks, and it doesn't get cleaned up often enough.

Then there are the fast-food bags and cups tossed from vehicles using residential neighborhoods as cut-throughs.

And Mourning Dove? Yikes. Juice boxes, candy wrappers, you name it... from the kids walking to/from the middle school.

I don't get it either.

I just want to scream on an almost daily basis...

when it's picked up. I bet half the trash I pick up when I run a route is just thrown in the can loose. Bag your trash, slobs!

In a Rush......we just ask them to bag it.

They kill wildlife.........get into our oceans. I wish they would ban them...so I would think more when I am in a rush.

I'm talking about putting an actual "garbage bag", (you know, Hefty, etc...?) in your garbage can before you start throwing shit smeared toilet paper, condoms, tampons and rotting food in there. It's unsanitary to have something with all that nasty shit in it without being contained in a garbage bag. Even after it's dumped all the residue from it is still in the can as well as hundreds of maggots that come from being a slob who doesn't use garbage bags. Fucking nasty. Bag your trash so it doesn't blow out all over the place and keep the can clean so it doesn't draw rats and roaches to everyone else's property around you.

That fear being that to be thoughtful and considerate, or in any way idealistic, is to be vulnerable and weak. It's therefore a defensive reflex that makes them do this as a way of saying, "see how selfish and cynical I am? Don't attack me".

It's probably because the state has cut spending to the bone and cleaning up trash was a luxury service.

One thing I've noticed is the amount of trash that flies out of the back of pickup trucks. I see it all the time and would wager they're the cause for a lot of the trash you see on the highways.The local roads are usually adopted by local businesses and community organizations, and they work hard to keep our little piece of heaven trash free. For the most part, people in my area are pretty conscientious about littering.

So...there is that which occurred during the Wall Street Banking Derivative Explosion in '08.

NOW WE COMMON FOLKS (Environmentalist Leaning) are CAUGHT OUT. Use the damned baggies and forget about the danger to our environment or be contentious and always ask the Check Out Cashier to use Cloth instead of paperas it takes her/he some extra time...and folks are glaring at you inline. I don't mind that much time...but, sometimes "in the rush to get out" I do the "PLASTIC" then go home and feel guilty. and, I do...but, OTHERS DON'T.)

and, you can't sell your house...or be considered a respectable Human Being ...UNLESS...You Modernize.

So throw it on the River Bank if you don't want to bother or don't believe in Environment. Just TRASH IT.

But...I got my MODERNIZATION...with my Granite and Stainless..and NOW...I'm GOOD TO GO!

TRASH IT ALL AND THROW IT OUT! WHOOPIE DO!

I've seen it all! 15-20 years ago, I remember when there were a lot of VCR tapes thrown from windows, then it was DVDs, and now it's cell phones...I had to quit after one of the toothless hill people stalked me because I supposedly removed his 'Possoms fer Sale' signs, and the local police turned the other way. So now nobody picks it up and it shows. One other thing...who the hell are the filthy animals that toss used diapers out the window?

that could end up in Turtle or other Wild Life's Stomach...

And, YES the Oceans don't SMELL the SAME as when I was a Kid. They say it's lack of Ocean Acidification or something like that...but, the seafood in the restaurants is mostly "Farm Raised" and folks don't care to check because they spent their money to give family a good time...so they EAT what sounds good.

In the past years it seems GOOD TASTING SEAFOOD (like I remember as an older DU'er) just isn't the same.........because it's "FARM RAISED".. if you ask. And, sometimes the waiter/waitress doesn't know...but, there's a "Pocket Guide" downloadable on Internet that tells you the Safe Fish and we keep the snip in our pocket. But how do all those OTHER COUNTRIES COPE? Like the Japanese who trawl off our coasts and the other conglomerates who also trawl...depleting all of our resources with little chance of fish recovery...and if they could the CRAP thrown in our Oceans still causes the EATING OF THEM into doubt.

IT SHOULD NOT BE THIS WAY......... But, we'd have to suffer not eating seafood to repopulate our oceans...and it's not just "Over Fishing" but the tons of POLLUTANTS (Plastics/Pesticides/Radiation/Household goods from Tsunami's and Storms/Flooding) thrown or leaking into our oceans that is the PROBLEM.

Humans can truly be the shit species when we aim as low as we sometimes do.

people's trash.. cig butts(a ton), empty beer cans/bottles, wrappers, even dirty diapers. the litter bugs are disgusting humanoids.

I carry those free available doggie poop bags with me and scoop it up practically every day. I can't stand to look at the trash while I'm enjoying the sea air that doesn't seem to bother too many. We have monk seals that come up there to rest ffs.

Sorry, about lake trash, NRL.. but, happy you got to see the beautiful birds.

quite pretty wondering why the F do the tourists that visit have to throw their crap all over the place as they pass through. I just get so disgusted at times.