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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?
In my city, cigarettes and scratch-off lottery tickets seem to be the things that people don't feel any particular need to dispose of properly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it tho? Coffee cups are made of paper. Cigarette butts are a plastic foam embedded with a multitude of carcinogens.
I don't have a reference, but I believe coffee cups are assumed to be recyclable even though actually, and in most part due to the polyethylene-lined inside, they are not.
Treat the symptoms, not the disease. Way to go!
More trash cans would be great, but they absolutely won't fix the problem when people regularly empty their contents onto the street.
Monday, 4/22, was Earth Day, after Good Friday, Passover, Easter, and of course 4/20 - so a near-perfect storm for SF.
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 invasive, of course, just odd.
I don't know what SF is like, but NYC has a fascinatingly ugly system [2] where you're supposed to put trash and recycling out on the sidewalk for it to be collected, where it's effectively temporary litter. NYC's sanitation workers are notoriously careless about handling the trash, and my pet theory is that a sizable portion of street litter actually originates in the sanitation workers spilling trash on pickup day.
NYC's trash problem is also exacerbated by the fact that landlords can get away with not doing their part in keeping the outside of the building litter-free.
[1] https://www.ediblegeography.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/S...
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One of the things that I've noticed traveling internationally for work is how much this differs from country to country. You'll be hard pressed to find a public trash can anywhere in Suwoon, South Korea. Meanwhile there's a trashcan on every single street corner in Düsseldorf, Germany. Neither city had much trash.
One data point: litter bins (public trash cans) were all removed from Central London decades ago because terrorists began planting bombs in them. Afaik they have been restored in recent years but the cultural memory of having to pack your trash home remains.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it tho? Coffee cups are made of paper. Cigarette butts are a plastic foam embedded with a multitude of carcinogens.
Wrong. Cigarette filters are made from cellulose.
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?
I think it's not so much that it's very prevalent, I think it's that most smokers don't carry their butts away with them if there's not a trash can 30 millimeters from their hands.
