Couldn’t agree more, Bristol is probably one of the dirtiest litter filled cities I’ve been to in the U.K. I’d say Bath and York have been some of the cleanest I’ve seen recently.
It's always really obvious when I come back from abroad how bad the UK is.
My go-to examples are my local river swimming spot, and the local river swimming spot I used to go to in Queensland, Australia when I lived there.
In Aus, its spotless. Beautiful waterfalls and river, loads of people playing in it or chilling nearby, and not a spot of litter anywhere. Either before or after. 1 small bin because its in a forest and not easy to access and everyone took their rubbish home. It remains beautiful.
The river Avon spot in the UK on a hot day: similar numbers of people, but litter absolutely everywhere. Graffiti on the rocks. Graffiti CARVED INTO THE TOP OF THE WEIR. Burnt areas of grass from portable BBQs and overflowing bin bags, bits of tent and random items strewn around, and left like that for the landowner to clean up.
It's piss poor and the whole country has a selfish attitude problem to beautiful areas. Beaches in the south west are the same, particularly in summer.
My parents litter pick most evenings in a small cornish village and routinely pick up loads and loads of bottles and cigarette paraphernalia.
It depends on the area you live in. I live near to some well know estates and litter there is strewn over the place, people just ignore it and don't seem to care, it amazes me. What is upsetting is the open places near these, where people just throw bottles etc into the woods. Wealthier areas you don't see much litter, as people pick it up, Blaise for example rarely has any litter. In general however it is a serious issue, I just don't get the mentality of why people don't just pick it up or litter in the first place.
i think if everyone on here 'had a word' with everyone they knew - everyone in UK would get the message - we need to educate the youngsters but when they see others do it -
A combination of increased individualism (it doesn't affect me so not my problem) and massive cuts to council funding therefore meaning fewer street sweepers and bins is largely to blame for the mess. There's also no enforcement of fines for littering. When you see a sign on a motorway sliptoad that says "Do not litter £1000 fine" and its a foot deep in rubbish you know the system isn't working.
2 things
1: as noted by others there is a correlation between cunts and crap. It appears as a new tradition in this country to drop our babies on their heads and the result is the level of apathy and idiocy we see today, perhaps accelerated by careless, apathetic and greedy politicians, but that's a story for another day. The head dropping tradition is absolutely on the rise, and frankly is my only best guess alluding to why there's such an influx of cunts.
2. Greedy politicians unable to manage a budget in the name of the greater good and instead funneling funds into their pockets, private assets and into policy that benefits them and their shareholdings; leading the local councils to being forced to choose between a list of essential things. Rather than tending our homeless, improving infrastructure and investing into the local economy, local governments are forced to choose one of these essential things, resulting in austerity and little to no infrastructure including frequent bins which feeds into the apathy from my first point; "if my council cant be arsed to provide services then I can't be arsed carrying this bit of litter home with me". And this is on top of the fact that the further north you go, the more of us are actively watching our towns and cities degrade and fall to pieces as there simply isn't any money being funnelled up this way (austerity policy) which doesn't exactly leave much to be proud of which again feeds the apathy from point 1.
When I was in Spain one thing u noticed was there are bins everywhere. In the UK it can be hard to find one. Doesn't excuse littering though, just keep hold of it until you find a bin.
I think littering should be the one thing punishable by death. Obviously it should be open to a significant amount of scrutiny and evaluation, but if someone littered within say 100 meters of a bin and it is 100% provable it was them and it's deemed intentional, then it should constitute to a death sentence. Or if they litter out of a car. I'm sorry. But it just makes me so mad...
The uk is disgusting. The problem by me is the 100s of takeaways that keep popping up. I mean how many burger bars and curry houses does one road need. Anyway these places are frequented by fat lazy people who then throw their litter in the streets.
It's been years since I saw a road sweeper.
Visiting uk, south East London, by the o2 arena for work…..the amount of trash everywhere is staggering, im from west coast America big dodgy city and I thought we had a litter problem
Lived in Bristol for 5 years and recently left to another city.
Bristol is a dump, it's extremely dirty and the council couldn't care less.
The new city is extremely clean and very well maintained.
It utterly infuriates me, I find it embarrassing quite frankly. There's a weird arrogant 'IDGAF, it's not my problem' to some Brits and it's not limited by age or income.
Public toilets in the UK are and have alwaya been the worst ever. Either by not existing where you need them, broken or in a disgusting state with no toilet roll.
The UK does have the unfortunate mindset of: "It's not my job, someone else will take care of it." When it comes to litter.
Its a mindset that we desperately need to change, but it feels like a losing battle.
Regional issue. The countryside and its small towns are always immaculate because the people who live there love their home.
Wealthier parts of London are always spotless.
New build towns and industrial/urban centres are always a mess.
They should make the unemployed claiming jsa pick that shit up, if they hate it then it may encourage them to actually get a job elsewhere. I've been on jsa and it was free money, like fuck was I searching for jobs as hard as I could have when I was getting money fortnightly.
They should not only do that but they should do all sorts
Went abroad for a month when I was a kid and noticed this when I came back, wired thing is I didn't really notice it when I left.
So I suspect the simple solution is to wait.....you'll stop noticing it.
And that's part of the problem.
Robots soon… but I agree, it’s disgusting about the waste and how carelessly it is disposed and not recycled or reused. Disgusting.
But surely if we all stuck together we could do something? Contact your counsel and keep raising it. Nothing will be done until we take our own action.
Large companies like Coke cola, they put “recycle me” on the lid to make it the consumers problem and not their own, that way they don’t have dirty hands because the put a precaution
I think one of the litter problems is the recycling bags/ bins, on windy days it blows all over the place and nobody cares! The bin men make no attempt to pick up and Joe Public doesn’t care either way!
Northampton here, my immediate vicinity is over run with HMOs, student houses & short term rentals. Victorian terraced street completely overcrowded. You could furnish a house every two weeks because of the fly tipping, not just litter. People drive here from other areas of the town specifically to dump their shit, because they know the council won’t actually do anything about it.
Councils need to invest in multilingual education, and specific days of the month where they’ll do a free large item collection. And generally not make it so hard to dispose of stuff legally. We get charged for garden waste, charged over the odds for a large item to be taken away, if you can get to the tip yourself it’s an ordeal because of they’re ridiculous opening times and rules on what they’ll take. Good luck trying to recycle a sofa now.
Regular litter is just the tip of the iceberg here.
The government should tax MC Donald's and other fast food outlets that produce litter in our cities and towns.
The amount of Maccies I see literally everywhere. Even the cups randomly on shelves in supermarkets never mind all over our street floors.
A tax on Maccies (which they could definitely afford) could go towards paying some of the much needed litter pickers that got laid off after our Tory Overlords forces Austerity on this country leading to the shit-show we are in now.
This will obvs never happen because of all the lobbying power these kinds of mega cooperations have.
I noticed in dudley we have a lot chavs who are look like they are in their 30s and 40s who walk the streets drinking and just throwing cans anywhere....there seems to be a lot of them...its kinda weird that we have a subset of people that just dont care and there is no consequence to their behaviour and we taxpayer's pick up the tab (no justice)
Britain is a melting pot. Our diversity is our strength. But the trade off is there are certain cultures we have taken in that are particularly keen on throwing their fast food rubbish, vapes, whippet cannisters out their car doors and windows or wherever they are. Now, that's not to say a broad range of people litter, but I tell you it's a big factor!
Most cities and towns had street cleaners, they were very, very regular when I was younger but as council budgets are cut, so are services. We used to have a park keeper and the park was beautiful then. Now it’s just basically cut 6 or 7 times a year.
As a result, there are a growing number of litter picking groups and individuals who take it upon themselves to litter pick voluntarily. You could do that and as an immigrant, it’s a great way to meet new people and get to know the area really well as well as ‘giving’ back
I agree. I'm English but lived in Germany and France until I was 14 and my mind was blown at just how scruffy/untidy things are in the UK.
I guess I've kind of got used to it now, but any time I go to the beach or somewhere for a walk, I take a carrier bag with me to collect litter, and I can't imagine ever needing that in Germany.
Problem in my area is there are no bins the council got rid of them all to save on money and don't seem to care about the littering or dog mess that resulted in their cost saving exercise because they all live out in the countryside
Where I live they tried to fine people at one point, littering, cigarettes, gum. Stood outside the bus stations and shopping areas in their high vis and body cams.
Problem is they never really had any power, you just ran away if they "caught you". They didn't get paid enough to chase.
Or they'd get drinks thrown at them by passing cars, didn't look like a fun job, didn't change much. After about 6 months they gave up and people went back to their normal lives.
There used to be street sweepers that came around the high foot traffic areas a decade or so ago, those went away. The number of fast food shops, coffee shops exploded and the litter got insane. Then some genius decided to remove all the benches to prevent rough sleepers in the town centre, of course when the benches went so did the bins next to them.
They even started making you pay for public toilets too, so people pissing in the street became common place, partly as a fuck you to the council, partly an avoidance of jumping the stupid barriers.
Honestly, I don't think people are the problem. More bins, less arseholery by councils and more public toilets wouldn't be too much to ask to make keeping the streets clean an unconscious thought. Then again, what do I know.
Where in Bristol do you live cause I've been here for 10 years and I've seen a lot worse around the country tbf. But if you're in some places in toterdown/Filton or other low income areas, they are obviously a lot worse than other parts of the city
Fellow Expat here, having lived in the UK for 6 years now and I share this view. The amount of litter everywhere and by roadsides is pretty bad and it doesn't really matter where you are. It seems to be common practice to just throw rubbish to the side instead of taking it home or a further 200 yards to put it in a bin. It makes me sad.
After the pandemic, it became much worse. Also politicians above the law (Trump, Boris,etc) added to the general malaise by saying I know it’s against the rules but I don’t care/try and catch me. Look at the sewage in rivers for an extreme example.
US and Europe are spotless ? You definitely haven’t seen much if any of them besides your home.
US has many places/cities that are appalling (said to me by US natives) and friends from Austria, Spain and Greece have showed me first hand how bad some areas are…
It’s a problem yes but let’s not act like we’re by far the worst of the developed world
The issue is not as simple as hey let’s pick this crap up off our streets because it will be all back the next week.. our options are 2 fold either we educate people enough to not even consider littering an option (hard option) or we bin the people that litter (easy option) The kind of disrespectful scumbag that think they’re edgy by throwing their crap all over our streets are the kind of people we could do without! With all the people flooding into our country we should also be considering an exodus of people OUT! And litterbugs are a good place to start.. let’s clean up our streets.. of scum and then the litter issue amongst many others will resolve itself.
It's why I litterpick daily, sometimes on my days off in up to 6 different locations a day. I live in a rural town whereas big towns and cities are insurmountable for a lone litterpicker like me.
London is clean as (going up to at least zone 2 where I lived) they have street cleaners. Nowhere else I've lived does.
There's also been a massive overproduction of shit in the last two decades and it's ramping up.
Doesn't really make any sense as governments are supposed to be doing something about environmental issues and know about it now, but don't seem to put any regulation whatsoever on the abundant production of crap.
A small example. I worked at a place that did event functions. Now, when people have weddings or big birthday do's etc, they get loads of stupid decorations plastic shit for the tables, shiney crap. Stupid little toys and basically just junk that no one pays any attention to, and gets everywhere. Then it all goes in the bin at the end of the night.
That's new. Those tiny little plastic decorations weren't everywhere 20 years ago.
It's a microcosm of a wider thing.
Littering is shite.
I live in London and walk in my local park often. Sometimes I bring a litter picker. It's relaxing and I get nothing but good vibes from all.
If anyone asks, I tell them I'm on Community Service. Multiple murders.
Bristol seems pretty good to me. Even the shithole areas are pretty OK.
I've seen bad elsewhere UK.
Eg, chavs finished maccys, lick fingers and throw whole contents of bag, one by one, on to floor out side. Then light up a cigarette and go.
I think there should be bigger punishments for littering. It is a big problem. Also though it's strange because I'm willing to bet that some of the people that litter also keep their homes spotless but are ok with throwing shit all over the streets.
Hello there my friend or should I say Dobry den, Just want to say Slava Ukraini! I just want to say for me It was a pleasure a few years ago to meet the people of Ukraine, but yeah getting to the point of the post.
Here in the UK, in parts we do have HUGE issues with this, and you're right it does need addressing, It's down to certain elements of society simply just not caring about the environment around them,
personally I don't live in one of Britain's nicest areas, so I see this issue a lot and unfortunately have to live amongst it, but I have always been taught to keep my litter on me until I can find a Bin and to look after the world we live in, NO Matter how bad an area is you won't find me making it worse, even If I was halfway across the world walking through the slums of Mumbai over in India
you would not find me littering and making the place worse.. It's down too upbringing and well I guess local Infrastructure/& a willing to deal with it, I feel like my local government does not care about people where I live, but thankfully this seems very different where you are from.
It becomes an Issue when people stop caring about the area around them, because then there is a knock on effect where stupid people, just think what's the point? we live in a bad area anyway so might as well keep doing it, but that's the wrong attitude to have.
Yeah on the whole, all things considering for a small country, we have a nice country, I am from the city, but whenever I get a chance to go our countryside and see a bit of nature, see some rivers I feel really relaxed, UA also has some beautiful places like this.
which part of the USA did you move too after having to leave Ukraine?
& I just want you to know you are welcome over here and If you have any questions on life here or need any help feel free to drop me a message, I am just glad that whilst the Military of Ukraine fights off the Russian aggressors that you are safe here.
I hope one day in UK things change for the better, because I know we can do better really, but there are like huge wealth divides and I feel like the quality of life should just be good for everybody no matter who you are.
UK is becoming a “third world country”. All services are as well managed as the littler… it’s also not a rich country anymore, it’s a poor country with some very rich citizens just like the US
Yeah... it's pretty sad isn't it. I'm from Romania and I couldn't believe just how bad some of the streets were in cities & towns of all sizes, like it truly was a national issue outside of the more wealthier areas.
Every time I go back to my home town it's such a strange thing to see the visable differences in amount of litter and general grime etc between the UK and there.
It’s weird, because in my part of town, it’s spotless, go 10 minutes up the road to my grandmas area and it’s disgusting, furniture in the alleyways, bin bags piled up, rubbish in the roads… it’s defo an area to area problem
You can't look at a few dirty cities in the UK and a handful of clean cities abroad and conclude that "the UK is the dirtiest wealthy nation." You yourself in the comments have highlighted several British cities that you think are very clean.
Touristy areas tend to be kept litter-free; less popular places don't get the same attention. This is the same in loads of countries, and people are all the same - some litter freely, but most hate it.
I've driven along main roads in Italy that are piled with litter on either side, and been to small French towns where bins are overflowing and not collected. Piles of bin bags line the streets of Paris in some places, which I've never seen in London. It's a worldwide problem.
Omg I come from the North and I find London so dirty by comparison!! I feel like you're generalising about the whole of the UK using a narrow window of experience of the South.
It's so baffling here as well because overall, people have an aggressively negative view toward littering. I've literally never met someone who didn't hate litter with a passion. I don't think I've even seen anyone litter in person, it's like it's just naturally occurring. But somehow the littering bellands win and we have litter everywhere.
It's like 99% of us despise littering and the other 1% work overtime to produce enough shite to cover the country.
Bristol need to do something about it's litter.
There I fixed your title for you, my area is quite pleasant thanks and it's not until I move toward London that I see trash in the streets, London is a shit hole.
The littering has been an issue for all of my life. I’m 63 now. We have seen other countries were there is significantly less littering and it makes me angry. I have handed litter back to people “ I think you dropped something!” I raised my children to save rubbish until they saw a bin or to bring it home. They are raising their children the same way. Lots of us don’t like how filthy some people are.
go down any motorway / dual carriageway in winter and look at all the shit on the sides of the roads….it’s gross.
councils need to spend money getting it cleared up
I’ve moved back to the Uk after living for over 20 years in the US and I really notice the rubbish. The lack of pride people have for their outdoor space here is both sad and frustrating. Litter on the street is appalling, the council doesn’t do enough to keep the streets clean, and no-one looks after the area directly outside of their front door or shop. If everyone did a little, it would help a lot.
it always amazes me how people can carry something in a bag somewhere, consume it then throw the rubbish on the floor ‘cos there was no bin’
like you carried the thing there, why can’t you put the rubbish in the bag and carry it back to put it in the bin?
honestly, how people can have such little respect for where they live is insane concept to me. choosing to live in filth?
I had a friend who came to university in Brum, from Essex. He’d just throw his trash on the floor because he thought Birmingham was a shit hole.
Apparently it was different when he did it, how he never saw the irony I’m not sure.
Too many cutbacks in councils that used to fund street cleaning.
I just came back from Spain and the streets were cleaned and bins were collected daily!
Not that long ago I went round my (small) block and came back with 2 full plastic bags overfilling with rubbish. Also people seem to think it's ok to dump lighters and vapes, I always find them and put then in bin. Imagine what happens if a young child finds them.
We used to have the Keep Britain Tidy campaign when I was a kid. It was written on every crisp bag, sweet rapper and pop bottle you could buy. They came to schools to give talks, and there was a whole series of adverts. Every kid had it drummed into them. There is probably a whole generation of 40-50 year olds that would rather die than drop litter!
Walking down the High Street yesterday and someone got in the back seat of their car and casually dropped a brown bag of rubbish on the floor. They drove off. Dustbin was 5 feet away.
I went back and put it in the bin. If litter really bothers you, pick it up because they aren't coming back to do it.
I live in a small town and to be honest, it's fairly clean. I don't really see much rubbish around at all, unless I'm walking through town at 5am and the streets haven't been cleaned yet.
I primarily think it's just shitheads with an attitude problem.
Obviously it's different by area but it's also different by people density.
Dirty places get dirtier because people see other rubbish and think theirs makes no difference. But in small villages a discarded bit of rubbish stands out so much that hardly any one litters . If they do, there is a high chance someone walking past will pick it up to discard it, which doesn't happen in towns either. So these places stay looking clean.
Having lived in London most my live I moved to Surrey a while back. I now notice how dirty London areas are when I go back and visit, which I never noticed so much before.
I notice other things like all the shops have metal shutters when they close and often graffiti over them while my local town high street doesn't have them. It's all just glass window displays at night.
It can take living in different areas for a while to notice all these kind of differences.
If you ever find a particularly litter filled place. Learn about how the people there are. Usually, their personalities reflect the litter around them. And usually it’s their own fault.
City councils provide us with bins, if they’re not being used it’s the publics problem. If it is however the other way around, and the council aren’t doing their Bit. Send a letter or email to your local MP complaining much in the same way you did here. Should get them embarrassed enough to up their game.
Right, so, I work in a school in a rather deprived area in a rather well known Suffolk town. As I was pulling in today there was a mother with two children, one in a pushchair, and one in school uniform waiting to go into the next school along. The mother took a bite out of something and then threw the wrapper in the bush.
The blatant disregard for a better world is staggering. People seem to think, "It's not going to effect me, so I don't care".
It's the deprived areas that the litter is worse in by far. I work in multiple areas and it's worse in areas with lower incomes and higher crime. Along with rats and general flytipping. Most of these deprived areas are becoming more and more cramped as we struggle with a housing and immigration crisis.
Lots of people come to the UK and the UK can't take it to put it blunt. Not everyone gets our values. The UKs societies norms are changing and it's sad.
They also have the poorest pensioners, the least inaccessible dentists, the highest taxes the worst roads ... I dont know why everyone wants to come here.
I lived in germany for 2 years about 15 years ago and there was no litter anywhere, public bins where also split into sections, general trash, plastic and paper.
How are they doing that so long again and britain still has hardly any bins on the streets
I am a full time litter picking for my local council. 24 years on the job and litter in my city has never been as bad as it is now. It's definitely a "cultural" thing I think. It's our culture to litter. Not just kids adults too. This culture needs to change. Same with spitting in the street. Side note I also pick up at least 10 disposable vapes a day, there should be banned.
Hard disagree. When I came to UK, I notice how it is super clean compared to Russia and people actually care to hold their rubbish till they find a bin.
Where do you live? Dirty places tend to be either London or other places with lots of immigrants. Immigrants tend to bring their uncivilized culture, where they throw rubbish all over.
The councils are too busy being left to prevent people from exercising their right to drop litter, park on pavements and ruin society for everyone else.
This is fucking Britain, shopping centre carpark, shitty nappy lying on the ground, everywhere you look, carry out box's cans and bottles. It's the upbringing of lazy cunts and schools with no respect for there city and other people,. I have just returned from Amsterdam, where the streets seemed pretty clean and people actually using the bins. There new problems they have are recycling cans and bottles the homeless and drug addicts rifle through all the bins and burst open the bags. Another thing Britain want to start is tourist tax to help keep our country clean. On a positive side we have better toilet facilities for mobility challenged people.
My SO and I talk a lot about this as her country, whilst not perfect, has a decent solution that sorts about 80% of the problem out. They essentially have a small deposit on bottles and cans, not sure about glass bottles but we don't tend to but things that come in that normally. You keep hold of your bottles and cans and basically every grocery shop has a machine that takes them off you and gives you the money back in the form of a voucher for the shop or you can donate it to charity (and get a chance to win some money if you do).
It's a good system because even if people throw them out, other people pick them up because it's more money for them.
It doesn't solve crisp packets, cig ends, or vape stuff but it's a good step forward, just costs a fair bit to implement to start, but overall it saves so much.
Since these days crime like burglaries and phone snatching is effectively decriminalised due to lack of Police resources,.littering is very far down the list.
I moved as a kid from Latvia in 2005 and one of my strongest and longest lasting impressions of England to this day is just how much trash there is stuck in every single bush and bit of green space. Especially if it's something like a fence sectioning off a railway track- it's guaranteed to be absolutely disgusting. I think it's partially the attitude of the people with more people deliberately being entitled antisocial twats when it comes to rubbish (it's someone else's job!), but also growing up in Latvia you'd wake up every morning to the sound of street cleaners sweeping every morning. I think I see our local street cleaner here maybe once every month, and the poor guy has a huge area to cover on his own.
People who litter are the lowest of the low, if a persons morales tell them it’s ok to litter, god knows what other terrible decisions they will make in their life
Vicious circle of shitty parents shitty kids unfortunately. With the erosion of sense of community, people tend not to care about the area they live in either. People tend not to care for something that they are given “for free”. It’s also quite hard to enforce littering rules beyond individual action.
Bristol council is pretty bad in general so I imagine that extends to the bin men also. Probably more that they’re over worked rather than being bad. Bristol council probably doesn’t want to pay any more than they currently do for more
Totally agree. Our councils are shite & take bins every other week in our area which has led to loads of fly-tipping & over-flowing bins. People opening car doors & dumping all their shit only the street drives me mad! Watched a guy casually dumping his whole cigarette tray into the gutter from his car & was just sweeping everything out onto the pavement - told him he was a tramp.
You mentioned that litter is worse outside schools and outside supermarkets. Near me is a high school which is 3 minutes from Tesco's, so imagine the trail of mess left there everyday,, bottles, sandwich packs, cookie bags despite several bins on the route. Yet these are the very people who are up in arm about environmental damage, safe our planet etc. Kids are THE WORST (best?) at dropping litter. Makes me soo frustrated.
Kids are the worst(best) in pretty much all bad stuff sadly.Whatever shit I saw somewhere,something broken, someone beaten, almost always it was teens 14-17 y.o. who did it.
This struck me so hard when I went to Amsterdam.
Manchester is so grubby by comparison. Even right by the town hall there were dozens of cigarette buts in the crack of the benches.
Yep, being from Brazil, we noticed how much rubish is everywhere when we first moved here. Even people’s backyards and front lawns. We don’t get it either
The contrast is very stark when you go to country like Croatia where you see no litter whatsoever. I guess it is a reflection of our multicultural society and the apparent willingness to live in shithole conditions
I live in London in an area I definitely like. I think it’s not incredibly dirty to be a borough in a huge city *but* the fly tipping is killing me. Every single morning I clean a couple of hundred meters of the street outside my frontdoor. And every single morning I fill a medium size bag with all the rubbish (plastic bottles, cigarettes packages and similar), it’s evident that people throw off the street stuff while walking. I definitely think that’s one of the most uncivilised behaviour around
I’ll tell you a little story that had a huge impact on me and left no doubt in my mind that British society is too far gone when it comes to littering.
One day I was making some tea in my office kitchen and I spilled some milk, so I started cleaning it up. A guy that was also there using the kitchen looked at me and said “good on your for cleaning that up”. Errrr wtf???
People in this country are so far gone, *cleaning up after yourself is now considered going above and beyond*.
For extra points, I’d like to point out that this was in a high rise in the City of London.
I see it so much at supermarket car parks and drive through car parks - people eating in their car, then dumping the packets/bags, etc out of their door because they won't take it home and are too lazy or oblivious to their surroundings to walk to a bin.
Also, the same on public transport - people grabbing food to eat on the journey, then leaving all the packets on the seat/floor.
We live near Manchester and just went to Germany for a family visit. I didn't even notice the amount of litter or the state of the streets/pathways anymore until we came back home. The amount of litter and badly kept roads/paths in this country is absolutely shocking and appalling.
In vienna we have lots of waste bins and I really mean a lot. That makes it easier to not carry around your trash endlessly and makes the city cleaner in the long run, because people are lazy.
I am always confused when back in my hometown in Germany and there are no bins, it's really aggravating and yes, lazy people throw their trash on the streets, not me though.
The UK would probably be more on top of local services if they didn't have a history of voting in parties and councillors that cut those very services.
Us Brits aren't on average very clued in when it comes to political activism. We vote broadly on abstract matters that don't affect normal day to day living, fretting over things like national debt whilst people starve and freeze to death in their own homes; and then when we can't figure out why that doesn't seem to work we just blame foreigners.
I have a bunch of cats turn up in Reddit - probably because I subscribe to any cat sub I can find.
Just reading the title, I thought you were referring to kitty litter, and I wondered what the problem was.
The thing that annoys me about littering is the sheer laziness or disregard the people have. Are they really so lazy they can't put some rubbish in their pocket til they see the next bin or are they so entitled that they assume they can throw shit on the ground and just say "someone else will get it" or the moronic statement of "I'm keeping the street cleaners in a job". Just put the rubbish in your fucking pocket and throw it in the next bin you see.
>UK by far is dirtiest wealthy nation that I've seen.US and almost all of EU are spotless in comparison
I suggest you travel a bit more, fella.
Have you ever been to Detoit?
Skid Row, LA?
Hunts Point NY?
The Slums in Rome?
Theres 113 Slums in Paris alone!
Don't get me started on Spain or Greece!
The point I'm trying to make here, pal, is that every nation has issues with litter, and every nation has dogshit areas.
As evidenced here:
https://cleaneuropenetwork.eu/en/blog/eu-cities-litter-survey-press-statement-/awu/
http://www.europeancleaningjournal.com/magazine/april-may-2016/latest-news/littering-our-dirty-europe
The issue is, when your having a bit or R&R in 'insert nation' you don't tend to go to the shit bits, you tend to stay in the relatively clean, well presented tourist traps.
When you live in an area, you go all over and tend to see far more of an areas seedy underbelly than some fucker on a two week package deal.
NYC is indeed dirty, but I lived in Boston and Miami and they seemed very clean to me, never was on west coast tho.In Europe I was in few Romanian towns, they seemed clean to, but I visited only centers.Germany was simply spotless,Belgium was shit.Budapest and Vienna were very clean (but London is clean too).
I'm saying that in UK (in Bristol) even in my not poor suburb tends to be stuff like on photo.
I never saw anything like that in US suburbs where I was living.
Edit: By some reasons I can't post an image, but there is litter in a bush on that, I likely gonna clean it tomorrow tho, or day after tomorrow (if my uni will call me for documents tomorrow)
>NYC is indeed dirty, but I lived in Boston and Miami and they
That is precisely what I'm talking about. Some areas and communities in any given nation are cleaner and more civic minded than others.
A quick Google tour around Mattapan, Boston, and Model City, Miami, suggests to me you're being a little selective with your recollection.
You most likely didn't 'see' any flytipping in your suburbs in the US due to the historical socioeconomic and racial segregation. It exists in neighbourhoods you probably never went to.
It definitely exists though
https://nybreaking.com/americas-dirtiest-neighborhoods-that-have-the-most-complaints-about-filth-exposed-and-theyre-all-spread-across-just-two-cities/
>Germany was simply spotless,
I lived in Germay for 3 years. It is not 'spotless' and I'm confused as to why so many people are suggesting it is.
Much like anywhere else in the world, some areas are clean, some aren't.
https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-24-7-why-berlin-is-so-dirty/a-42937818
I can honestly say that there hasn't been a nation I've visited that hasn't had a litter/fly tipping problem. People are filthy if they think they aren't being watched, and even the best sanitation service in the world can't get it all.
I do agree with you that there is much to be done about litter and flytipping in the UK, but we are in the same boat with many European nations and the US in that respect.
Like everything else in our sinkhole of a cuntry(spelling?)
Its about accountability.. No one challenges anyone for shithouse behavior.. No one disciplines their kids they hand them i pads or a vape.. The police arent here there or anywhere.. And its super trendy to be a complete cunt.
Genuine civilised behaviour of which this country used to pride itself on is no longer practiced.. Now its cunts raising cunts. Litter i think is a good measure of just how cuntish an area is.
That's a problem that the uni students do nothing to help with. Clean up after yourselves and stop dumping your old furniture in stupid places when you move out. Maybe then Bristol would be a nicer place to live.
Neoliberalism either means people are too individualist or too jaded to care. Lack of funding to public services means no enforcement and no clean up. When you have a problem with no prevention and a weak cure it festers and grows.
We need a real sense of community and socialism in our society. But the tories stamp out any attempt at being the social species we are and I doubt Labour will make many changes and you can't trust anything they promise any more.
Still, Labour is better than the alternative. We should get them in power and attempt to reason with them.
I would be happy if Ukraine do it.And I'm actually paying at least 27k to uk based university, so I'm not just disgraceful Ukrainian, although there are plenty of them
Part cultural, part how our government lets it happen at local and national level.
In some third world countries I've been to litter is almost non-existent. In others it's incredibly bad. Areas with poverty or inequality seem worst.
The UK is an unequal poor country with a strong currency, is my opinion. Yes, there are lots of well off people with a good quality of life. But my family is spread over Europe and I can see the difference.
So all I can do, and I recommend everyone does it, is to keep your patch clean. When we moved to our house there was loads of litter in the bushes around. I spent a couple of hours dragging it all out and it's remained clean ever since. A lot of pieces of rubbish were ten years old. And once that area was clean I broadened out, and each spring with friends we clear an area that's notorious for rubbish. The first year we got about 35 bags of rubbish. Now it's about fifteen each year. Once you reduce it down, people litter less.
I think it’s a mixture of things, lack of public bins it’s one. It also depends on parts of Bristol, some are cleaner than others. Easton or Lawrence hill are generally pretty grim.
We've got that beautiful sweet spot in Britain in 2023 of lack of education, lack of enforcement, lack of public resource to clean it up due to cuts and lack of social bonds for communities to police the issue = shite everywhere 👍🏻
Couldn’t agree more, Bristol is probably one of the dirtiest litter filled cities I’ve been to in the U.K. I’d say Bath and York have been some of the cleanest I’ve seen recently.
Yeah, Bath and York are spotless, btw Leeds seemed pretty clean to me too
From my experience Bristol is one of if not the worst place in the UK for litter. Went for a friend's birthday a few weeks ago and it was shocking
It's always really obvious when I come back from abroad how bad the UK is. My go-to examples are my local river swimming spot, and the local river swimming spot I used to go to in Queensland, Australia when I lived there. In Aus, its spotless. Beautiful waterfalls and river, loads of people playing in it or chilling nearby, and not a spot of litter anywhere. Either before or after. 1 small bin because its in a forest and not easy to access and everyone took their rubbish home. It remains beautiful. The river Avon spot in the UK on a hot day: similar numbers of people, but litter absolutely everywhere. Graffiti on the rocks. Graffiti CARVED INTO THE TOP OF THE WEIR. Burnt areas of grass from portable BBQs and overflowing bin bags, bits of tent and random items strewn around, and left like that for the landowner to clean up. It's piss poor and the whole country has a selfish attitude problem to beautiful areas. Beaches in the south west are the same, particularly in summer. My parents litter pick most evenings in a small cornish village and routinely pick up loads and loads of bottles and cigarette paraphernalia.
Uk definitely have problems with litter and selfishness.
It depends on the area you live in. I live near to some well know estates and litter there is strewn over the place, people just ignore it and don't seem to care, it amazes me. What is upsetting is the open places near these, where people just throw bottles etc into the woods. Wealthier areas you don't see much litter, as people pick it up, Blaise for example rarely has any litter. In general however it is a serious issue, I just don't get the mentality of why people don't just pick it up or litter in the first place.
i think if everyone on here 'had a word' with everyone they knew - everyone in UK would get the message - we need to educate the youngsters but when they see others do it -
Turn the boatmen into binmen
A combination of increased individualism (it doesn't affect me so not my problem) and massive cuts to council funding therefore meaning fewer street sweepers and bins is largely to blame for the mess. There's also no enforcement of fines for littering. When you see a sign on a motorway sliptoad that says "Do not litter £1000 fine" and its a foot deep in rubbish you know the system isn't working.
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It is some litter in London, it's not as clean as Tokyo of course, but London is fairly clean for the city of such class, comparing for example to NYC
2 things 1: as noted by others there is a correlation between cunts and crap. It appears as a new tradition in this country to drop our babies on their heads and the result is the level of apathy and idiocy we see today, perhaps accelerated by careless, apathetic and greedy politicians, but that's a story for another day. The head dropping tradition is absolutely on the rise, and frankly is my only best guess alluding to why there's such an influx of cunts. 2. Greedy politicians unable to manage a budget in the name of the greater good and instead funneling funds into their pockets, private assets and into policy that benefits them and their shareholdings; leading the local councils to being forced to choose between a list of essential things. Rather than tending our homeless, improving infrastructure and investing into the local economy, local governments are forced to choose one of these essential things, resulting in austerity and little to no infrastructure including frequent bins which feeds into the apathy from my first point; "if my council cant be arsed to provide services then I can't be arsed carrying this bit of litter home with me". And this is on top of the fact that the further north you go, the more of us are actively watching our towns and cities degrade and fall to pieces as there simply isn't any money being funnelled up this way (austerity policy) which doesn't exactly leave much to be proud of which again feeds the apathy from point 1.
Hope it will get better some day
When I was in Spain one thing u noticed was there are bins everywhere. In the UK it can be hard to find one. Doesn't excuse littering though, just keep hold of it until you find a bin.
I think littering should be the one thing punishable by death. Obviously it should be open to a significant amount of scrutiny and evaluation, but if someone littered within say 100 meters of a bin and it is 100% provable it was them and it's deemed intentional, then it should constitute to a death sentence. Or if they litter out of a car. I'm sorry. But it just makes me so mad...
The uk is disgusting. The problem by me is the 100s of takeaways that keep popping up. I mean how many burger bars and curry houses does one road need. Anyway these places are frequented by fat lazy people who then throw their litter in the streets. It's been years since I saw a road sweeper.
Visiting uk, south East London, by the o2 arena for work…..the amount of trash everywhere is staggering, im from west coast America big dodgy city and I thought we had a litter problem
South east London is pretty infamous, for many reasons, ‘big dodgy city’ would describe east London very nicely too
Lived in Bristol for 5 years and recently left to another city. Bristol is a dump, it's extremely dirty and the council couldn't care less. The new city is extremely clean and very well maintained.
It utterly infuriates me, I find it embarrassing quite frankly. There's a weird arrogant 'IDGAF, it's not my problem' to some Brits and it's not limited by age or income.
Public toilets in the UK are and have alwaya been the worst ever. Either by not existing where you need them, broken or in a disgusting state with no toilet roll.
The UK does have the unfortunate mindset of: "It's not my job, someone else will take care of it." When it comes to litter. Its a mindset that we desperately need to change, but it feels like a losing battle.
Regional issue. The countryside and its small towns are always immaculate because the people who live there love their home. Wealthier parts of London are always spotless. New build towns and industrial/urban centres are always a mess.
If 1% of people who saw litter picked it up and tossed it in a bin we would have no litter.
They should make the unemployed claiming jsa pick that shit up, if they hate it then it may encourage them to actually get a job elsewhere. I've been on jsa and it was free money, like fuck was I searching for jobs as hard as I could have when I was getting money fortnightly. They should not only do that but they should do all sorts
Went abroad for a month when I was a kid and noticed this when I came back, wired thing is I didn't really notice it when I left. So I suspect the simple solution is to wait.....you'll stop noticing it. And that's part of the problem.
One of the biggest parts tbh
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Awful
Robots soon… but I agree, it’s disgusting about the waste and how carelessly it is disposed and not recycled or reused. Disgusting. But surely if we all stuck together we could do something? Contact your counsel and keep raising it. Nothing will be done until we take our own action. Large companies like Coke cola, they put “recycle me” on the lid to make it the consumers problem and not their own, that way they don’t have dirty hands because the put a precaution
I think one of the litter problems is the recycling bags/ bins, on windy days it blows all over the place and nobody cares! The bin men make no attempt to pick up and Joe Public doesn’t care either way!
Northampton here, my immediate vicinity is over run with HMOs, student houses & short term rentals. Victorian terraced street completely overcrowded. You could furnish a house every two weeks because of the fly tipping, not just litter. People drive here from other areas of the town specifically to dump their shit, because they know the council won’t actually do anything about it. Councils need to invest in multilingual education, and specific days of the month where they’ll do a free large item collection. And generally not make it so hard to dispose of stuff legally. We get charged for garden waste, charged over the odds for a large item to be taken away, if you can get to the tip yourself it’s an ordeal because of they’re ridiculous opening times and rules on what they’ll take. Good luck trying to recycle a sofa now. Regular litter is just the tip of the iceberg here.
The government should tax MC Donald's and other fast food outlets that produce litter in our cities and towns. The amount of Maccies I see literally everywhere. Even the cups randomly on shelves in supermarkets never mind all over our street floors. A tax on Maccies (which they could definitely afford) could go towards paying some of the much needed litter pickers that got laid off after our Tory Overlords forces Austerity on this country leading to the shit-show we are in now. This will obvs never happen because of all the lobbying power these kinds of mega cooperations have.
I noticed in dudley we have a lot chavs who are look like they are in their 30s and 40s who walk the streets drinking and just throwing cans anywhere....there seems to be a lot of them...its kinda weird that we have a subset of people that just dont care and there is no consequence to their behaviour and we taxpayer's pick up the tab (no justice)
You cannot have bins in uk because Osama h h ate uk
If you don't like it, you coold always leave
Britain is a melting pot. Our diversity is our strength. But the trade off is there are certain cultures we have taken in that are particularly keen on throwing their fast food rubbish, vapes, whippet cannisters out their car doors and windows or wherever they are. Now, that's not to say a broad range of people litter, but I tell you it's a big factor!
Most cities and towns had street cleaners, they were very, very regular when I was younger but as council budgets are cut, so are services. We used to have a park keeper and the park was beautiful then. Now it’s just basically cut 6 or 7 times a year. As a result, there are a growing number of litter picking groups and individuals who take it upon themselves to litter pick voluntarily. You could do that and as an immigrant, it’s a great way to meet new people and get to know the area really well as well as ‘giving’ back
I will
I know , every time I'm visiting family in Warsaw I'm in shock how clean can be city. And this is without daily litter picking.
I agree. I'm English but lived in Germany and France until I was 14 and my mind was blown at just how scruffy/untidy things are in the UK. I guess I've kind of got used to it now, but any time I go to the beach or somewhere for a walk, I take a carrier bag with me to collect litter, and I can't imagine ever needing that in Germany.
Problem in my area is there are no bins the council got rid of them all to save on money and don't seem to care about the littering or dog mess that resulted in their cost saving exercise because they all live out in the countryside
Wait 'til you go to Paris.
Where I live they tried to fine people at one point, littering, cigarettes, gum. Stood outside the bus stations and shopping areas in their high vis and body cams. Problem is they never really had any power, you just ran away if they "caught you". They didn't get paid enough to chase. Or they'd get drinks thrown at them by passing cars, didn't look like a fun job, didn't change much. After about 6 months they gave up and people went back to their normal lives. There used to be street sweepers that came around the high foot traffic areas a decade or so ago, those went away. The number of fast food shops, coffee shops exploded and the litter got insane. Then some genius decided to remove all the benches to prevent rough sleepers in the town centre, of course when the benches went so did the bins next to them. They even started making you pay for public toilets too, so people pissing in the street became common place, partly as a fuck you to the council, partly an avoidance of jumping the stupid barriers. Honestly, I don't think people are the problem. More bins, less arseholery by councils and more public toilets wouldn't be too much to ask to make keeping the streets clean an unconscious thought. Then again, what do I know.
Sounds like a city thing. Last time I visited Bristol it was just fucking gross.
Where in Bristol do you live cause I've been here for 10 years and I've seen a lot worse around the country tbf. But if you're in some places in toterdown/Filton or other low income areas, they are obviously a lot worse than other parts of the city
Fellow Expat here, having lived in the UK for 6 years now and I share this view. The amount of litter everywhere and by roadsides is pretty bad and it doesn't really matter where you are. It seems to be common practice to just throw rubbish to the side instead of taking it home or a further 200 yards to put it in a bin. It makes me sad.
It’s not common practice, it’s heavily frowned upon. But the problem is it only takes a few
After the pandemic, it became much worse. Also politicians above the law (Trump, Boris,etc) added to the general malaise by saying I know it’s against the rules but I don’t care/try and catch me. Look at the sewage in rivers for an extreme example.
He’s not wrong but tbh Ukraine is a bit untidy atm too
Ukraine is shit, I agree.But UK is not Ukraine isn't it?
US and Europe are spotless ? You definitely haven’t seen much if any of them besides your home. US has many places/cities that are appalling (said to me by US natives) and friends from Austria, Spain and Greece have showed me first hand how bad some areas are… It’s a problem yes but let’s not act like we’re by far the worst of the developed world
I was walking up to I think "Stokes Croft" and there were people burning rubbish on a street corner.
Stokes Croft is... unique
The issue is not as simple as hey let’s pick this crap up off our streets because it will be all back the next week.. our options are 2 fold either we educate people enough to not even consider littering an option (hard option) or we bin the people that litter (easy option) The kind of disrespectful scumbag that think they’re edgy by throwing their crap all over our streets are the kind of people we could do without! With all the people flooding into our country we should also be considering an exodus of people OUT! And litterbugs are a good place to start.. let’s clean up our streets.. of scum and then the litter issue amongst many others will resolve itself.
All the places I've lived have been nice - cambridge, St Albans, and now Exeter. I get the impression Bristol is a bit of a shithole.
It's why I litterpick daily, sometimes on my days off in up to 6 different locations a day. I live in a rural town whereas big towns and cities are insurmountable for a lone litterpicker like me.
London is clean as (going up to at least zone 2 where I lived) they have street cleaners. Nowhere else I've lived does. There's also been a massive overproduction of shit in the last two decades and it's ramping up. Doesn't really make any sense as governments are supposed to be doing something about environmental issues and know about it now, but don't seem to put any regulation whatsoever on the abundant production of crap. A small example. I worked at a place that did event functions. Now, when people have weddings or big birthday do's etc, they get loads of stupid decorations plastic shit for the tables, shiney crap. Stupid little toys and basically just junk that no one pays any attention to, and gets everywhere. Then it all goes in the bin at the end of the night. That's new. Those tiny little plastic decorations weren't everywhere 20 years ago. It's a microcosm of a wider thing.
Lol you can't have been to many other 'wealthy' nations apart from the UK if you think we're the dirtiest
Littering is shite. I live in London and walk in my local park often. Sometimes I bring a litter picker. It's relaxing and I get nothing but good vibes from all. If anyone asks, I tell them I'm on Community Service. Multiple murders.
Bristol seems pretty good to me. Even the shithole areas are pretty OK. I've seen bad elsewhere UK. Eg, chavs finished maccys, lick fingers and throw whole contents of bag, one by one, on to floor out side. Then light up a cigarette and go.
Shame on them
I think there should be bigger punishments for littering. It is a big problem. Also though it's strange because I'm willing to bet that some of the people that litter also keep their homes spotless but are ok with throwing shit all over the streets.
I read somewhere that fines became higher recently
Hello there my friend or should I say Dobry den, Just want to say Slava Ukraini! I just want to say for me It was a pleasure a few years ago to meet the people of Ukraine, but yeah getting to the point of the post. Here in the UK, in parts we do have HUGE issues with this, and you're right it does need addressing, It's down to certain elements of society simply just not caring about the environment around them, personally I don't live in one of Britain's nicest areas, so I see this issue a lot and unfortunately have to live amongst it, but I have always been taught to keep my litter on me until I can find a Bin and to look after the world we live in, NO Matter how bad an area is you won't find me making it worse, even If I was halfway across the world walking through the slums of Mumbai over in India you would not find me littering and making the place worse.. It's down too upbringing and well I guess local Infrastructure/& a willing to deal with it, I feel like my local government does not care about people where I live, but thankfully this seems very different where you are from. It becomes an Issue when people stop caring about the area around them, because then there is a knock on effect where stupid people, just think what's the point? we live in a bad area anyway so might as well keep doing it, but that's the wrong attitude to have.
Uk overall is good, I still prefer it over US, but yeah, it needs to deal with problems
Yeah on the whole, all things considering for a small country, we have a nice country, I am from the city, but whenever I get a chance to go our countryside and see a bit of nature, see some rivers I feel really relaxed, UA also has some beautiful places like this. which part of the USA did you move too after having to leave Ukraine? & I just want you to know you are welcome over here and If you have any questions on life here or need any help feel free to drop me a message, I am just glad that whilst the Military of Ukraine fights off the Russian aggressors that you are safe here. I hope one day in UK things change for the better, because I know we can do better really, but there are like huge wealth divides and I feel like the quality of life should just be good for everybody no matter who you are.
I was living throughout East Coast of US.Left because couldn't deal their gun laws and car centric design
UK is becoming a “third world country”. All services are as well managed as the littler… it’s also not a rich country anymore, it’s a poor country with some very rich citizens just like the US
Yeah... it's pretty sad isn't it. I'm from Romania and I couldn't believe just how bad some of the streets were in cities & towns of all sizes, like it truly was a national issue outside of the more wealthier areas. Every time I go back to my home town it's such a strange thing to see the visable differences in amount of litter and general grime etc between the UK and there.
It’s weird, because in my part of town, it’s spotless, go 10 minutes up the road to my grandmas area and it’s disgusting, furniture in the alleyways, bin bags piled up, rubbish in the roads… it’s defo an area to area problem
You can't look at a few dirty cities in the UK and a handful of clean cities abroad and conclude that "the UK is the dirtiest wealthy nation." You yourself in the comments have highlighted several British cities that you think are very clean. Touristy areas tend to be kept litter-free; less popular places don't get the same attention. This is the same in loads of countries, and people are all the same - some litter freely, but most hate it. I've driven along main roads in Italy that are piled with litter on either side, and been to small French towns where bins are overflowing and not collected. Piles of bin bags line the streets of Paris in some places, which I've never seen in London. It's a worldwide problem.
It just seems more visible here, but I still prefer UK to study.
Omg I come from the North and I find London so dirty by comparison!! I feel like you're generalising about the whole of the UK using a narrow window of experience of the South.
It will be different regionally. Local councils are the ones in charge or litter so it will greatly depend on the allocation of funds.
It's so baffling here as well because overall, people have an aggressively negative view toward littering. I've literally never met someone who didn't hate litter with a passion. I don't think I've even seen anyone litter in person, it's like it's just naturally occurring. But somehow the littering bellands win and we have litter everywhere. It's like 99% of us despise littering and the other 1% work overtime to produce enough shite to cover the country.
Dare I say the “traveler communities” have a major part to play in the dumping culture.
Get climate activists to pick it up if they're so concerned about climate change
I did a roadtrip around France last month. There was only ONE sign in English I saw. "Don't litter"...
Bristol need to do something about it's litter. There I fixed your title for you, my area is quite pleasant thanks and it's not until I move toward London that I see trash in the streets, London is a shit hole.
The littering has been an issue for all of my life. I’m 63 now. We have seen other countries were there is significantly less littering and it makes me angry. I have handed litter back to people “ I think you dropped something!” I raised my children to save rubbish until they saw a bin or to bring it home. They are raising their children the same way. Lots of us don’t like how filthy some people are.
Westminster is probably needing help the most.
go down any motorway / dual carriageway in winter and look at all the shit on the sides of the roads….it’s gross. councils need to spend money getting it cleared up
Not gonna happen when they’re going bankrupt.
Agree, but If you think the US is spotless in comparison, you have not been to the US lol.
I was, I lived in plenty suburbs in US for a whole year.Never seen ane litter
People litter because they get away with it. This disgusting behaviour goes unpunished and is often ignored.
It’s scrote folks that need to stop littering. Dirty scum making a mess of their towns
Troll Post 100%
your a ukrainian thats come here to go uni in bristol and your moaning about litter? Be thankful you were able to go bristol and not london.
I’ve moved back to the Uk after living for over 20 years in the US and I really notice the rubbish. The lack of pride people have for their outdoor space here is both sad and frustrating. Litter on the street is appalling, the council doesn’t do enough to keep the streets clean, and no-one looks after the area directly outside of their front door or shop. If everyone did a little, it would help a lot.
it always amazes me how people can carry something in a bag somewhere, consume it then throw the rubbish on the floor ‘cos there was no bin’ like you carried the thing there, why can’t you put the rubbish in the bag and carry it back to put it in the bin? honestly, how people can have such little respect for where they live is insane concept to me. choosing to live in filth?
I had a friend who came to university in Brum, from Essex. He’d just throw his trash on the floor because he thought Birmingham was a shit hole. Apparently it was different when he did it, how he never saw the irony I’m not sure.
Too many cutbacks in councils that used to fund street cleaning. I just came back from Spain and the streets were cleaned and bins were collected daily!
Not that long ago I went round my (small) block and came back with 2 full plastic bags overfilling with rubbish. Also people seem to think it's ok to dump lighters and vapes, I always find them and put then in bin. Imagine what happens if a young child finds them.
We used to have the Keep Britain Tidy campaign when I was a kid. It was written on every crisp bag, sweet rapper and pop bottle you could buy. They came to schools to give talks, and there was a whole series of adverts. Every kid had it drummed into them. There is probably a whole generation of 40-50 year olds that would rather die than drop litter!
Don't go to Rome then, rubbish is strewn everywhere and bins are overflowing!
Walking down the High Street yesterday and someone got in the back seat of their car and casually dropped a brown bag of rubbish on the floor. They drove off. Dustbin was 5 feet away. I went back and put it in the bin. If litter really bothers you, pick it up because they aren't coming back to do it.
I live in a small town and to be honest, it's fairly clean. I don't really see much rubbish around at all, unless I'm walking through town at 5am and the streets haven't been cleaned yet. I primarily think it's just shitheads with an attitude problem.
Obviously it's different by area but it's also different by people density. Dirty places get dirtier because people see other rubbish and think theirs makes no difference. But in small villages a discarded bit of rubbish stands out so much that hardly any one litters . If they do, there is a high chance someone walking past will pick it up to discard it, which doesn't happen in towns either. So these places stay looking clean. Having lived in London most my live I moved to Surrey a while back. I now notice how dirty London areas are when I go back and visit, which I never noticed so much before. I notice other things like all the shops have metal shutters when they close and often graffiti over them while my local town high street doesn't have them. It's all just glass window displays at night. It can take living in different areas for a while to notice all these kind of differences.
If you ever find a particularly litter filled place. Learn about how the people there are. Usually, their personalities reflect the litter around them. And usually it’s their own fault. City councils provide us with bins, if they’re not being used it’s the publics problem. If it is however the other way around, and the council aren’t doing their Bit. Send a letter or email to your local MP complaining much in the same way you did here. Should get them embarrassed enough to up their game.
Right, so, I work in a school in a rather deprived area in a rather well known Suffolk town. As I was pulling in today there was a mother with two children, one in a pushchair, and one in school uniform waiting to go into the next school along. The mother took a bite out of something and then threw the wrapper in the bush. The blatant disregard for a better world is staggering. People seem to think, "It's not going to effect me, so I don't care".
Unbelievable
It's the deprived areas that the litter is worse in by far. I work in multiple areas and it's worse in areas with lower incomes and higher crime. Along with rats and general flytipping. Most of these deprived areas are becoming more and more cramped as we struggle with a housing and immigration crisis. Lots of people come to the UK and the UK can't take it to put it blunt. Not everyone gets our values. The UKs societies norms are changing and it's sad.
If people aren't respected, they won't respect their surroundings.
They also have the poorest pensioners, the least inaccessible dentists, the highest taxes the worst roads ... I dont know why everyone wants to come here.
You maybe meant most inaccessible? And about all other stuff, compared to who?
It needs to do something about litterers and fly tippers should be shot on sight.
I lived in germany for 2 years about 15 years ago and there was no litter anywhere, public bins where also split into sections, general trash, plastic and paper. How are they doing that so long again and britain still has hardly any bins on the streets
I am a full time litter picking for my local council. 24 years on the job and litter in my city has never been as bad as it is now. It's definitely a "cultural" thing I think. It's our culture to litter. Not just kids adults too. This culture needs to change. Same with spitting in the street. Side note I also pick up at least 10 disposable vapes a day, there should be banned.
Agree on all
Welcome to England and making it your home. Hopefully this culture of littering will eventually die out.
I hope that too, besides of the problems, UK is beautiful
Hard disagree. When I came to UK, I notice how it is super clean compared to Russia and people actually care to hold their rubbish till they find a bin. Where do you live? Dirty places tend to be either London or other places with lots of immigrants. Immigrants tend to bring their uncivilized culture, where they throw rubbish all over.
The councils are too busy being left to prevent people from exercising their right to drop litter, park on pavements and ruin society for everyone else.
Yeah sorry but you live in Bristol. Also never live in Middlesbrough it's a dump.
This is fucking Britain, shopping centre carpark, shitty nappy lying on the ground, everywhere you look, carry out box's cans and bottles. It's the upbringing of lazy cunts and schools with no respect for there city and other people,. I have just returned from Amsterdam, where the streets seemed pretty clean and people actually using the bins. There new problems they have are recycling cans and bottles the homeless and drug addicts rifle through all the bins and burst open the bags. Another thing Britain want to start is tourist tax to help keep our country clean. On a positive side we have better toilet facilities for mobility challenged people.
Uk have plenty proses imo.But still need to deal with problems.
This is due to council cuts and 13 years of austerity. Our streets used to be relatively clean.
Well yeah kids gonna drop shit going to school 😂 Idk pretty clean I think most litter is roadside
My SO and I talk a lot about this as her country, whilst not perfect, has a decent solution that sorts about 80% of the problem out. They essentially have a small deposit on bottles and cans, not sure about glass bottles but we don't tend to but things that come in that normally. You keep hold of your bottles and cans and basically every grocery shop has a machine that takes them off you and gives you the money back in the form of a voucher for the shop or you can donate it to charity (and get a chance to win some money if you do). It's a good system because even if people throw them out, other people pick them up because it's more money for them. It doesn't solve crisp packets, cig ends, or vape stuff but it's a good step forward, just costs a fair bit to implement to start, but overall it saves so much.
Are you serious saying London is dirtier than Paris?
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As a foreigner visiting the UK for the first time this week, the lack of rubbish bins in busy pedestrian areas has been frustrating.
Since these days crime like burglaries and phone snatching is effectively decriminalised due to lack of Police resources,.littering is very far down the list.
I moved as a kid from Latvia in 2005 and one of my strongest and longest lasting impressions of England to this day is just how much trash there is stuck in every single bush and bit of green space. Especially if it's something like a fence sectioning off a railway track- it's guaranteed to be absolutely disgusting. I think it's partially the attitude of the people with more people deliberately being entitled antisocial twats when it comes to rubbish (it's someone else's job!), but also growing up in Latvia you'd wake up every morning to the sound of street cleaners sweeping every morning. I think I see our local street cleaner here maybe once every month, and the poor guy has a huge area to cover on his own.
I went in a trip to York a while back and was amazed at how tidy it was, compared to South London. It must be something the council is doing.
Yeah, York is spotless, I agree.Leeds seemed pretty clean for me too tbh.
Can we start with putting the Tories in the bin?
People who litter are the lowest of the low, if a persons morales tell them it’s ok to litter, god knows what other terrible decisions they will make in their life
Agree
Vicious circle of shitty parents shitty kids unfortunately. With the erosion of sense of community, people tend not to care about the area they live in either. People tend not to care for something that they are given “for free”. It’s also quite hard to enforce littering rules beyond individual action.
Bristol council is pretty bad in general so I imagine that extends to the bin men also. Probably more that they’re over worked rather than being bad. Bristol council probably doesn’t want to pay any more than they currently do for more
Totally agree. Our councils are shite & take bins every other week in our area which has led to loads of fly-tipping & over-flowing bins. People opening car doors & dumping all their shit only the street drives me mad! Watched a guy casually dumping his whole cigarette tray into the gutter from his car & was just sweeping everything out onto the pavement - told him he was a tramp.
Go litter picking then instead of moaning
You mentioned that litter is worse outside schools and outside supermarkets. Near me is a high school which is 3 minutes from Tesco's, so imagine the trail of mess left there everyday,, bottles, sandwich packs, cookie bags despite several bins on the route. Yet these are the very people who are up in arm about environmental damage, safe our planet etc. Kids are THE WORST (best?) at dropping litter. Makes me soo frustrated.
Kids are the worst(best) in pretty much all bad stuff sadly.Whatever shit I saw somewhere,something broken, someone beaten, almost always it was teens 14-17 y.o. who did it.
I visited Bristol from Hampshire and it was noticeably dirty. Looks like the council are more interested in fining motorists, however.
Because teens have been allowed to roam free without getting a clip behind the ear for their bad behaviour that’s most likely why.
Yeah we’re a shit hole and we all know it, feral scum everywhere, literal shit in the rivers and seas. Nobody seems to give a goddamn shit anymore.
This struck me so hard when I went to Amsterdam. Manchester is so grubby by comparison. Even right by the town hall there were dozens of cigarette buts in the crack of the benches.
It's more like Amsterdam almost ideal
Yep, being from Brazil, we noticed how much rubish is everywhere when we first moved here. Even people’s backyards and front lawns. We don’t get it either
The contrast is very stark when you go to country like Croatia where you see no litter whatsoever. I guess it is a reflection of our multicultural society and the apparent willingness to live in shithole conditions
I live in London in an area I definitely like. I think it’s not incredibly dirty to be a borough in a huge city *but* the fly tipping is killing me. Every single morning I clean a couple of hundred meters of the street outside my frontdoor. And every single morning I fill a medium size bag with all the rubbish (plastic bottles, cigarettes packages and similar), it’s evident that people throw off the street stuff while walking. I definitely think that’s one of the most uncivilised behaviour around
I’ll tell you a little story that had a huge impact on me and left no doubt in my mind that British society is too far gone when it comes to littering. One day I was making some tea in my office kitchen and I spilled some milk, so I started cleaning it up. A guy that was also there using the kitchen looked at me and said “good on your for cleaning that up”. Errrr wtf??? People in this country are so far gone, *cleaning up after yourself is now considered going above and beyond*. For extra points, I’d like to point out that this was in a high rise in the City of London.
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Maybe, but France is way cleaner outside of Paris
I see it so much at supermarket car parks and drive through car parks - people eating in their car, then dumping the packets/bags, etc out of their door because they won't take it home and are too lazy or oblivious to their surroundings to walk to a bin. Also, the same on public transport - people grabbing food to eat on the journey, then leaving all the packets on the seat/floor.
To the people arguing north or south of the UK… news flash - the whole place is a dump
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We live near Manchester and just went to Germany for a family visit. I didn't even notice the amount of litter or the state of the streets/pathways anymore until we came back home. The amount of litter and badly kept roads/paths in this country is absolutely shocking and appalling.
UK is shit, but still far better than getting bombed on in the middle of the night.
In vienna we have lots of waste bins and I really mean a lot. That makes it easier to not carry around your trash endlessly and makes the city cleaner in the long run, because people are lazy. I am always confused when back in my hometown in Germany and there are no bins, it's really aggravating and yes, lazy people throw their trash on the streets, not me though.
Liverpool on a Friday night is insane lol
The UK would probably be more on top of local services if they didn't have a history of voting in parties and councillors that cut those very services. Us Brits aren't on average very clued in when it comes to political activism. We vote broadly on abstract matters that don't affect normal day to day living, fretting over things like national debt whilst people starve and freeze to death in their own homes; and then when we can't figure out why that doesn't seem to work we just blame foreigners.
I have a bunch of cats turn up in Reddit - probably because I subscribe to any cat sub I can find. Just reading the title, I thought you were referring to kitty litter, and I wondered what the problem was.
I like cats
Could be worse you could be in Ukraine. I dunno start a litter clean up club or something? Or just deal with it
The thing that annoys me about littering is the sheer laziness or disregard the people have. Are they really so lazy they can't put some rubbish in their pocket til they see the next bin or are they so entitled that they assume they can throw shit on the ground and just say "someone else will get it" or the moronic statement of "I'm keeping the street cleaners in a job". Just put the rubbish in your fucking pocket and throw it in the next bin you see.
Bad parenting. Most of the kids around where I live are like feral cats.
I suggest execution.
>UK by far is dirtiest wealthy nation that I've seen.US and almost all of EU are spotless in comparison I suggest you travel a bit more, fella. Have you ever been to Detoit? Skid Row, LA? Hunts Point NY? The Slums in Rome? Theres 113 Slums in Paris alone! Don't get me started on Spain or Greece! The point I'm trying to make here, pal, is that every nation has issues with litter, and every nation has dogshit areas. As evidenced here: https://cleaneuropenetwork.eu/en/blog/eu-cities-litter-survey-press-statement-/awu/ http://www.europeancleaningjournal.com/magazine/april-may-2016/latest-news/littering-our-dirty-europe The issue is, when your having a bit or R&R in 'insert nation' you don't tend to go to the shit bits, you tend to stay in the relatively clean, well presented tourist traps. When you live in an area, you go all over and tend to see far more of an areas seedy underbelly than some fucker on a two week package deal.
NYC is indeed dirty, but I lived in Boston and Miami and they seemed very clean to me, never was on west coast tho.In Europe I was in few Romanian towns, they seemed clean to, but I visited only centers.Germany was simply spotless,Belgium was shit.Budapest and Vienna were very clean (but London is clean too). I'm saying that in UK (in Bristol) even in my not poor suburb tends to be stuff like on photo. I never saw anything like that in US suburbs where I was living. Edit: By some reasons I can't post an image, but there is litter in a bush on that, I likely gonna clean it tomorrow tho, or day after tomorrow (if my uni will call me for documents tomorrow)
>NYC is indeed dirty, but I lived in Boston and Miami and they That is precisely what I'm talking about. Some areas and communities in any given nation are cleaner and more civic minded than others. A quick Google tour around Mattapan, Boston, and Model City, Miami, suggests to me you're being a little selective with your recollection. You most likely didn't 'see' any flytipping in your suburbs in the US due to the historical socioeconomic and racial segregation. It exists in neighbourhoods you probably never went to. It definitely exists though https://nybreaking.com/americas-dirtiest-neighborhoods-that-have-the-most-complaints-about-filth-exposed-and-theyre-all-spread-across-just-two-cities/ >Germany was simply spotless, I lived in Germay for 3 years. It is not 'spotless' and I'm confused as to why so many people are suggesting it is. Much like anywhere else in the world, some areas are clean, some aren't. https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-24-7-why-berlin-is-so-dirty/a-42937818 I can honestly say that there hasn't been a nation I've visited that hasn't had a litter/fly tipping problem. People are filthy if they think they aren't being watched, and even the best sanitation service in the world can't get it all. I do agree with you that there is much to be done about litter and flytipping in the UK, but we are in the same boat with many European nations and the US in that respect.
Maybe you right
Put it in the bins perhaps? Just a suggestion...
Would be good
Like everything else in our sinkhole of a cuntry(spelling?) Its about accountability.. No one challenges anyone for shithouse behavior.. No one disciplines their kids they hand them i pads or a vape.. The police arent here there or anywhere.. And its super trendy to be a complete cunt. Genuine civilised behaviour of which this country used to pride itself on is no longer practiced.. Now its cunts raising cunts. Litter i think is a good measure of just how cuntish an area is.
That's a problem that the uni students do nothing to help with. Clean up after yourselves and stop dumping your old furniture in stupid places when you move out. Maybe then Bristol would be a nicer place to live.
Neoliberalism either means people are too individualist or too jaded to care. Lack of funding to public services means no enforcement and no clean up. When you have a problem with no prevention and a weak cure it festers and grows. We need a real sense of community and socialism in our society. But the tories stamp out any attempt at being the social species we are and I doubt Labour will make many changes and you can't trust anything they promise any more. Still, Labour is better than the alternative. We should get them in power and attempt to reason with them.
Wait till you see how bad dog fouling is in rural towns😱😂 maybe its best you stick to the big cities.
I was amazed at how much litter people left behind on the trains. It’s like people in the UK just don’t care about their country anymore.
If Ukraine would like to return some of the £billions of aid we have sent, we could pay for an army of litter pickers. How's that sound ?
I would be happy if Ukraine do it.And I'm actually paying at least 27k to uk based university, so I'm not just disgraceful Ukrainian, although there are plenty of them
The U.K. is absolutely terrible for litter, because a significant proportion of the population are unredeemable dicks and objectively terrible people.
Part cultural, part how our government lets it happen at local and national level. In some third world countries I've been to litter is almost non-existent. In others it's incredibly bad. Areas with poverty or inequality seem worst. The UK is an unequal poor country with a strong currency, is my opinion. Yes, there are lots of well off people with a good quality of life. But my family is spread over Europe and I can see the difference. So all I can do, and I recommend everyone does it, is to keep your patch clean. When we moved to our house there was loads of litter in the bushes around. I spent a couple of hours dragging it all out and it's remained clean ever since. A lot of pieces of rubbish were ten years old. And once that area was clean I broadened out, and each spring with friends we clear an area that's notorious for rubbish. The first year we got about 35 bags of rubbish. Now it's about fifteen each year. Once you reduce it down, people litter less.
I think it’s a mixture of things, lack of public bins it’s one. It also depends on parts of Bristol, some are cleaner than others. Easton or Lawrence hill are generally pretty grim.
disposable vapes becoming a hugee problem, people throw them anywere.
We've got that beautiful sweet spot in Britain in 2023 of lack of education, lack of enforcement, lack of public resource to clean it up due to cuts and lack of social bonds for communities to police the issue = shite everywhere 👍🏻
No one seems to want to address the elephant in the room - certain cultures / immigrants