Throwing rubbish: Are you a polite litterer?

In the UK it is commonly called fly-tipping, a term that is derived from the word ‘fly’ meaning to throw rubbish out of a moving vehicle. Some drivers still do it but not just in the UK. You often see cigarette ends or dirty tissues being tossed out or discretely being dropped out of car either while it’s moving or when it has stopped at a traffic light. The drivers assume that the activity is never going to be spotted and the rubbish will eventually disappear. Yet it ends up being blow to the side of the road where it clogs the drains which is a potential flooding hazard when it rains.

But now the term fly-tipping applies not just to people in moving vehicles. It applies to anyone throwing rubbish into undesignated areas whether it’s the side of the road, fields or rivers. I was by the creek several months ago and was flabbergasted at the amount of waste floating around in the water. A clean-up crew in boats was busy using nets to scoop up cigarette ends, wrappers and other debris.

Unfortunately in the UK, reports suggest that people leaving rubbish lying around is becoming common. It could be a can of soft drink, an empty coffee cup or an empty beer bottle. From the way the rubbish has been left, studies have identified three types of fly-tippers though I’m not even sure that is the correct term for them. They have designated them intentional, accidental and polite.

Accidental is a thing of which we might all be unwittingly guilty. You’re rummaging in your pockets for something and, unbeknownst to you, a tissue or a receipt drops out. Or if you’re rummaging inside your handbag and a piece of paper or tissue drops out without you knowing. This is known as accidental littering. But I feel that there’s a very fine line between accidental and intentional littering because at some point that accidental littering turns into intentional littering. If you don’t notice the thing drop out of your pocket or handbag and walk away then it truly is accidental but if you accidentally drop an item in this way and notice it but choose not to pick it up, then it’s both accidental and intentional. Either way, in England both are criminal offenses.

The intentional litterer does so because he can’t be bothered to look for a bin or the bin is too far away from where he’s standing and he can’t be bothered to take the rubbish home and discard it there.

Then there’s the polite litterer. These people will litter but not because they want to litter. They do so because they can’t find a bin nearby. Or they might be near a bin that’s brimming and they can’t put anything in it. So they strategically place it near the bin so that the bin man can see it. Other polite litterers will place their rubbish in bushes so it’s concealed or blends in with the background. If it’s a tissue they might stuff it behind an exposed pipe. They might prop a bottle up on a wall or a bollard or an electric board rather than dropping it, causing it to shatter, or have it rolling around on the ground. These litterers don’t want their litter to harm anyone.

And some litterers try to be artistic or want to add some humour to their rubbish. They place items in undesignated places in such a way that it looks funny to them. For example a row of used coffee cups on a wall might look funny to someone else other than them. None of the above is acceptable in the eyes of the law.

But there’s one form of littering that’s often overlooked or not addressed and that’s smokers’ litter. It seems in the minds of the smoker that it’s not only okay to stub out a cigarette against a wall but to drop the cigarette end onto the ground where they’re standing. Sometimes the end hasn’t even been stubbed out properly. Smokers seem to not regard it as littering presumably because they think it’s so small no one’s going to notice it.