We picked up, tracked, and analyzed 130k pieces of litter in SF • Hacker News Board

Re: We picked up, tracked, and analyzed 130k pieces of litter in SF

#111

Post by matthewowen » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 11:05 AM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #104

cies wrote: post #95

I played with the thought that municipalities should hold the producers of the product (packaging) that can be foud in the streets responsible for the cleanup cost. Some kind of data needs to be collected by a team like this team an based on that data the offending brands get bills. Besides that I think littering could benefit from heavy fines, the same way speeding tickets helped with traffic safety. Basically a nea…

25 cents deposits on cans and bottles did wonders in Germany. You can leave them anywhere in the city and they'll be gone within five minutes. This also turned out to be a surprisingly effective, although somewhat sad, wealth redistribution scheme. It's unfortunately not realistic to do for every kind of wrapper. Although maybe a weight-based rough measurement might work: I. e. a cents/gram of packaging, and your rec…

States in the USA have been doing this for years too. 10 cents for bottles and cans in California, and you just don't really see them on the street for this reason. What you do see is... everything else.

Re: We picked up, tracked, and analyzed 130k pieces of litter in SF

#112

Post by maccard » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 11:11 AM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #77

olliej wrote: post #3

I’d be interested in seeing the correlation with the existence (or not) of trashcans. Huge swathes of commercial/retail areas in SF have no/few trashcans, and I would assume that there’s a limit to how long people will carry trash/empty containers before just dropping them on the ground

I visited a friend in South America. The city was, and I just checked still quite clean. My friend said the reason was city took over the trash service (which got them in trouble with the IMF) and put out dumpsters every few blocks. Soon as it was 'free' people stopped dumping trash on the street. Two answer the question people at least there would carry a bag of trash a few blocks.

My city started charging £5 for a "bulky item pickup", which needs to be booked 2 months in advance (I just checked). Unsurprisingly, we now get mattresses/furniture dumped on the side of the street for a week.

Re: We picked up, tracked, and analyzed 130k pieces of litter in SF

#113

Post by matthewowen » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 11:33 AM UTC

agota wrote: post #101

cies wrote: post #95

I played with the thought that municipalities should hold the producers of the product (packaging) that can be foud in the streets responsible for the cleanup cost. Some kind of data needs to be collected by a team like this team an based on that data the offending brands get bills. Besides that I think littering could benefit from heavy fines, the same way speeding tickets helped with traffic safety. Basically a nea…

Why would you hold the companies that produce the products responsible when they have no control over what someone does with the packaging of their products?

Companies have choice over how they package their products, and have a number of levers to change behavior: they might reduce the extent to which they provide packaging (does that single piece of fruit need to be wrapped in plastic?), or offer incentives to customers to provide their own packaging (eg cups at coffee shops), or might provide incentives for packaging to be returned instead of trashed (deposits on cans and bottles).

And at the end of all that, if a company still produces products that we know will probably end as packaging litter... hell yeah, charge them (and implicitly the littering consumers) for that negative externality.

Re: We picked up, tracked, and analyzed 130k pieces of litter in SF

#114

Post by leetcrew » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 11:45 AM UTC

toomanybeersies wrote: post #90

irrational wrote: post #4

This was a fascinating read. I'm surprised tobacco is the number 1 litter. I rarely see people smoking anymore where I live, so I would assume it would not be a top contributor to litter. Is smoking still very prevalent in San Fransisco?

Most smokers assume that filters are actually biodegradable (it is possible to buy biodegradable filters if you roll your own), when in fact they aren't. I never chuck my butts on the ground, if there isn't a rubbish bin nearby, I'll either put the butt back in my packet, or just put it in my pocket. When I see friends tossing their butts I always have a go at them for littering, most just don't even realise what the…

I'm not sure that many smokers still believe butts are biodegradable, but I could certainly be wrong.

I suspect (as an exsmoker) that it's more about the availability of cigarette receptacles. most smokers I know are willing to dispose of butts when there's a convenient place to put them, but are not willing to carry them around until they find a suitable place. used cigarettes make your clothes smell a lot worse that merely smoking outside.

Re: We picked up, tracked, and analyzed 130k pieces of litter in SF

#115

Post by rob74 » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 11:56 AM UTC

atombender wrote: post #37

Cigarette butts seem to be the most common by count , but what about weight and volume? On the streets of NYC, I don't really notice the cigarettes, but I do notice the enormous amount of plastic bags (much of it stuck in trees), plastic or paper cups, straws, takeout containers. And gum. If you ever look at a sidewalk and see dark splotches [1], that's discarded chewing gum. It's absolutely everywhere. Not as invasi…

And then they wonder why they have a rat problem...

Re: We picked up, tracked, and analyzed 130k pieces of litter in SF

#116

Post by twic » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 12:00 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #91

chrischen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the connection is probably poverty. They gives less of a ____.

I guess. When I was really poor, I rolled my own cigarettes. And when I finished one, I kept the tobacco in a small plastic bag. As backup, for when I was too poor to buy more. You may say "yuck". But trust me, good tobacco the second time around is better than the stuff in those nasty папироса.

How do you smoke tobacco twice?

Re: We picked up, tracked, and analyzed 130k pieces of litter in SF

#117

Post by mikekchar » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 12:30 PM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #108

mikekchar wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan is culturally very different. Every Japanese person is taught at school how to act in society. Cultural values are instilled there. In the west we believe that parents should have the last say on how to bring up children. In Japan, teachers have the last say. Teachers go to students' homes to make sure it is an acceptable environment for the student. If it is not, parents are required to take classes on how to…

If the cliché is to be believed, there are some downsides to this level of obedience, such as stifling people in their most creative years, or really any opposite of one would expect a meritocracy to achieve. Some would probably consider your description of parent-teacher relations to be borderline dystopian. I really wonder if those societal traits are necessarily linked, i. e. by being opposite ends of a spectrum o…

Truly hard to say. I can say that I like the way things work in Japan. Even though I have no kids, people often ask me if I would put them in Japanese schools. I'd practically insist on it. However, I know several expats who hate these things.

One of the things I've come to realise is that one person's dystopia is another's utopia. I've often felt that living in Japan is a bit like living in a real life "Leave it to Beaver" or "Andy Griffith's show" (especially out in the countryside where I live). I see Japan slowly getting more and more Westernised and it fills me with dread. I lived for nearly 40 years in a society that I really disliked and when I moved to Japan, to my surprise, it was like coming home to a home I had never known. It's 12 years later and I am just getting more and more Japanese.

Japanese people, in general, also like Japanese culture. If you ask a Japanese person why they don't litter, I will lay pretty good odds that the answer will be, "Because I am Japanese". That's really the only answer. You're very unlikely to get an in depth answer about it being good for the environment, or a socially responsible thing to do. People really enjoy this identity. It's one of the reasons that there are relatively few Japanese people who live for long periods abroad.

I guess the thing is that most people are happy in Japan, in the same way that most people are happy in other first world countries. Some people are very unhappy, of course, but I can't really point to a country where that isn't the case. Some things are screwed up, but most things work very well -- just like any other first world country. I should point out that I've lived in Canada, the US and the UK for long periods of time as well, so I've got a pretty good basis for comparison.

Could there be a middle ground between how Japan works and how countries like Canada and the US work? Maybe, but I think you would have a lot of struggles to find the balance to make it work. You would also almost certainly lose very, very good things on both sides and I'm not sure that you would find very, very good things to replace them with.

Re: We picked up, tracked, and analyzed 130k pieces of litter in SF

#118

Post by blaser-waffle » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #110

newnewpdro wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's often the most convenient form of breathe odor control available. I keep a pack of gum in my car at all times just in case I have a drink socializing somewhere. Having alcoholic beverages on your breath when you get pulled over for something unrelated can make the experience far more annoying, unnecessarily.

You could keep mints instead of gum? My parents kept gum in the car for a long time, and every time I took some it was always stale.

No idea if it's true but I've heard a lot of mints have alcohols in them which could skew breathalyzer tests if you have one in your mouth a few minutes before.

Re: We picked up, tracked, and analyzed 130k pieces of litter in SF

#119

Post by blaser-waffle » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

paggle wrote: post #24

lxe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tokyo has almost no public trashcans. And the crowds are significantly larger than SF, and it's significantly cleaner in Tokyo (at least from what I've seen).

You can't really use Japan as a model for any place outside of Japan. You can't make San Francisco's residents behave like Tokyo's any more than you can make Ruth Bader Ginsburg the left tackle for the Dallas Cowboys.

Let's be real, RBG is small and scrappy -- she's never going to be a tackle for any team.

Running back or receiver? Yeah maybe.

Re: We picked up, tracked, and analyzed 130k pieces of litter in SF

#120

Post by verall » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

jacobush wrote: post #49

steve19 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a school of thought that less trash cans reduces litter. I am a little skeptical of the idea but I see the point.

In Japan, there are no trash cans and people take their litter with them. In Disneyland, there was more litter until they put trashcans everywhere .

This is nonsense, there are plenty of public trash cans in Tokyo at least. Not on every corner like in the States, but within 2-3 blocks you can find one and plenty of establishments have no problem letting you use their trash can.