Three separate places I went to at 8 in the morning. Gas station, dunkin’ donuts, and then a convenience store. All of them, trash is full. People wonder why they litter in the USA, there’s nowhere to throw away trash when you’re out. It’s unbelievable People can just go to work and choose not to do their job anymore. That people see this and they don’t have any problem with it, no interest at all to keep things neat and tidy and clean. Nope.
In Japan it’s almost impossible to find a trash can on the streets and yet people don’t litter. The problem is the culture centered around consumerism and waste.
This. Throwing your trash on the ground because you can’t find a trash can amounts to childish entitlement in my eyes.
No trash cans in the forest, is OP saying they just litter all through nature when they go camping?
A lot of people do…
Yeah, I fill up a trash bag every time I go hiking
Keep up the good fight! I’ve got several miles of trail cleaned behind my hood, one more major path to go!
Maybe you do this, if not, take a plastic retail bag, fold it over twice, while pressing the air out, roll it up tight and rubber band it. I always have 2-4 highly compact bags.
I once dropped a water bottle out of my backpack, and couldn’t find it when I retraced my hike, but I did start noticing tons of trash everywhere.
So I started keeping a trash bag in my backpack, and filling a small bag every time I hike.
I may not have found my bottle, but I’ll make sure I clean up more than I left every time I’m out.
they just litter all through nature when they go camping
Many americans do just that, yes. :'(
It’s somewhat comforting to know that no matter how far out in the wild you go you eventually find signs of humanity.
The fact those signs are pieces of trash that someone either left or blew in on the wind is depressing.
With respect to Japan, there’s definitely a culture difference, but I don’t think it’s the consumerism/waste culture. There’s so much excess packaging in Japanese food products.
Yeah, East Asia doesn’t even try to minimise packaging. Environmentalism just isn’t the same there or something.
Yeah, but do they wolf down a half pound of meat plus fried potatoes and a half gallon of sugar water four times a day in Japan?
Possibly, where are you going with this?
Smaller portions creates exponentially less waste. It also isn’t frequently greasy western fast food waste that is inconvenient to carry around for any period of time.
Like I wouldn’t mind carrying around a paper wrapper from a nice sandwich place, but fast food waste is greasy and likely to leak.
Dude, larger portions have less packaging, just because of the square-cube law. I’m actually having trouble thinking of a counterexample, even.
No. They have rice.
Half a gallon of rice water?! :P
They would use liters, but yes. The Japanese aren’t going to just chuck out their rice water.
What about the baby?
Gone. Don’t you know the phrase don’t throw the rice water away with the baby?
I mean, that’s just one guy, but this whole idea that Asians never overeat is borderline racist. They’re not all skinny monks in saffron robes.
In fairness, I remember a time when everyone smoked in Japan and flicked cigarette butts all over the place.
Get what you pay for. The minimum wage is still 7.25 federally. I can’t believe employers just choose not to pay livable wages.
Lose me with this “nobody wants to work anymore” bullshit. Nobody wants to pay anymore.
It’s another true half statement the middle management refuses to complete. “Nobody wants to work anymore for the wages offered for these types of jobs”. Same old story as middle management accepting “the customer is always right” (and entitling shitty customers) without finishing it with “in terms of market trends”
Don’t worry, you’ll soon get massive tax cuts for companies and their executives, while basic goods get 25%-35% pricier for the worker class due to the tariffs since the orange potato has to fun those tax cuts somehow.
Or, hear me out… carry it until you find one with room? If finding full trash cans “forces” you to litter, that says more about you being an entitled piece of shit than it does about anything else.
“I couldn’t find a single vacant public toilet, so I did what any sensible person would do and took a shit in the middle of the sidewalk.” —OP, analogously
Literally what happens in a lot of places. Even Europe has a noticeable pee smell sometimes.
You’re asking people to take on extra work. Some might. Others won’t or even can’t if they’re really in a tight spot.
Especially in the US where people drive everywhere more often than not. Keep a small trash bag in your car, empty it when you get home.
The trouble with that approach is that my garbage cans fill up at home, and I’m too lazy to take them out to the dumpster.
OP didn’t say he littered. But of course we always assume the worst around here.
Yeah! Fuck you OP!
Well, they’re blaming “lazy workers” instead of the litterers, so yeah, I’m inclined to believe the worst about them, too.
I feel like the solution to having some trash while the trash can is full, is to…just carry it with you till you find an empty one?
otoh if you’re lazy and not the best person, and if it’s too much of a hassle to carry around…
…it should be legal for civilised people to nail it to your fucking forehead
Personally, if I see a full trash can I will keep my trash with me until I can find a place to dispose of it. I can’t imagine just throwing it on the ground regardless of the can situation.
I’ve had plenty of times where I get home and empty my pockets of the trash I accumulated with no can nearby.
And if I try to put something in a can and it falls out, I’m taking it with me because I didn’t succeed in throwing it away.
Shrugging ans saying “well I tried” as you walk away isn’t even trying.
Japanese people do that as trash bins are very rare. It is an education issue and not the lack/full of trash binsy
You’re a rare breed
Maybe we should reduce the amount of shit we have to throw away.
But also maybe pay the garbage men fairly, and tell the business or municipality that the garbage collection is insufficient for their needs.
reduce, reuse, recycle.
That shit is in order of most impactful.
I buy as much as I can second hand. Doing so, I am not bombarded with trash. No boxes, no bags, no plastic wrap.
We should 100% just not be producing all this trash. Coffee at home has zero waste, no plastic cup, no receipt, no carrier, no lid,… do that shit everyday x millions of people. smh
Coffee elsewhere is the exact same as long as you bring your own cup
For sure.
Don’t garbage men have surprisingly handsome pay? Or is that just an urban legend I’ve fallen for?
They are. But Sanitation workers wouldn’t be emptying any of these bins in my experience as a guy who lives in the US.
Oh, for sure. Most of these ones in the image seem like they should be taken out by an employee of whatever restaurant or gas station they’re at, placed into a dumpster, and then taken away. I forgot to even address the fact that sanitation workers have fuck-all to do with the pictured garbage; good call.
They get paid more than most people would think but it’s still not enough based on the hazards of the job. They get exposed to all sorts of nasty things that can ruin their long term health and they have increased likelihood that they’ll get a life-altering injury at work.
Hey I don’t see any garbage men going on cruises in the bahamas or the carribbeans.
They don’t wear their coveralls on cruises. They wear their swim suits like everyone else. Smh.
Those cruise ships must be filthy
Yeah, OP is complaining to the internet when they should be bugging town council. Although they seem to think it’s just low-wage workers messing with them personally…
Meanwhile in Japan public trash cans are extremely rare and people are expected to bring their trash home and throw it away there. And they do. We are just a spoiled society.
I forgot what event it was here in Germany (where there are plenty of trash cans, at least in the inner cities) but every group of Japanese tourists left places they visit cleaner than they found them. They were nice
The FIFA games from a couple of years ago had an instance of that, with the Japanese spectators seen cleaning up in the stands after a game
That’s probably it.
In the US we teach kids that trash men are suckers and idiots that didn’t work hard enough in school! Also, that trash is an externality: Someone else’s problem.
“We pay taxes for people to clean that up! Why should I spend my valuable time doing someone else’s job‽”
It’s an awful culture.
"We pay taxes for people to clean that up! Why should I spend my valuable time doing someone else’s job‽”
Same people that complain that taxes are the government stealing from them.
I teach my kids that trash collectors are doing a necessary job that few want to do and that they get paid out the ass to do it.
Garbage men make so much money
This post gives me “people don’t want to work anymore” vibes.
Another way to look at it is, people don’t want to pay people to work anymore. Either the pay is such shit that the employees have no incentive to give a crap, or the employer doesn’t hire enough people to get the work done.
You don’t even know how fast these damn bins fill up. I’m a janitor at McDonald’s, and move between 5 locations (same franchise owner). The two that are in a highway rest stop kind of area that get the most customers have several cans around the parking lot. I empty them before the restaurant even opens, and all or most of them are already full by my first break. There’s only ever 1 janitor on shift at a time and we can’t be everywhere all the time. Something I have had to explain to the owner who constantly gets on my ass about the cans in the parking lot being full. “Do you want me to just spend all day making sure the garbage cans are empty or shall I do the other tasks I have as well?”
The bins themselves look pretty large with the huge stone enclosure they’re in; but the actual can inside is not even as big as a standard home kitchen bin, and the amount of trash generated by a single to-go meal from the restaurant is pretty nuts. And this is just from a fast food place. The bins placed by the city or municipality probably have even less of a chance to be serviced when the employees who do that are also in charge of cleaning the park bathrooms, mowing the grass, trimming trees and shrubs, fixing road signs, etc.
Not all heroes wear capes.
That’s no excuse for littering - but it is super annoying.
There’s a dunks near me that moved its trash out of the drive in line WAAAAAAY over to the other side of the parking lot. Intentionally, so that I don’t bother them by throwing away, you know, the bag and napkins they give you.
That was the straw that broke the camels back - I just make my coffee now in the morning. It’s 1/100th the price and aggravation.
Maybe you should try to do the job of the trash collectors for a week and see if it’s really honest to say “Its unbelievable people go to work and choose not to do their job anymore”.
Most jobs have lunatics in leadership positions who think people can survive on exposure or gift cards or a minimum wage that cannot afford 3 healthy meals a day.
“Unskilled Labour” is a lie told by business people to swindle money from hardworking people. Most of the rich people on the planet are scoundrels.
You should be more angry at the throwaway society we’ve become to create so much trash, rather than rant at the person who might be the sole employee until someone else comes in to do the regular morning cleanup duties.
So you think some full trash cans cause people to head out to the interstate and only then throw shit out their window? Guess they’re making a statement or something…
There’s a litter bin near my house in a rural area that the council has obviously forgotten about. It’s been full for weeks!
You should see the amount of litter scattered around
Oh wait, it’s absolutely none, because we’re not fucking selfish savages
No fucking excuses for littering, ever. That’s a societal problem, not a bin problem
Eh, It’s a bit of both. No amount of societal pressure will solve a complete absence of waste disposal infrastructure. It’s a matter of making sure the sense of shame and/or duty is greater than whatever distance there inevitably is to a working bin.
A bit of one and mostly the other. The other being “you don’t drop shit on the ground expecting someone to clean up after you”
You know, civilisation. Society. Decency
Really boils my piss
Careful, if you’re mad that people are shit you’ll be mad forever.
This just seems like a lot of words for the same ol’ no one wants to work anymore bullshit
It’s infuriating that we have so much trash that needs throwing away. Most of those cans were probably empty in the morning.
They probably emptied them when they opened and it’s been busy since it’s the morning rush.
But sure bitch and moan since you think they’re lazy instead of probably slammed by people like you wasting their time.
If they took time to empty it people like you would just bitch there’s a lineup instead, can’t ever be pleased eh?
