30 million tons of litter

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goo_mason

Champion barbed-wire hurdler
Location
Leith, Edinburgh
So many people really don't give a stuff. Their take is that it's someone else's job to clear up and they're keeping them employed.

We lost all individual bins at work years ago, and we have groups of communal bins around the department for recycling: paper, confidential paper, general waste, plastic cups, plastic bottles/cans.

Unfortunately, people will just stuff all of their rubbish in the first bin they get to (even though the bins are grouped together in 'pods' so you're not having to walk to different places to get to the relevant bins). The 'Plastic Cups Only' bin seems to be the most popular for stuffing paper cups, crisp & paper bags, sandwich boxes, banana skins etc in. No matter how many appeals the company makes, folk just ignore them. The waste bill skyrocketed last year because all contaminated recycling has to go to landfill, and landfill has become very expensive. Sees some would rather see jobs cut to save money than take a second to put their waste in the corrrect bins.

Moving your hand 30cm to the left or right is beyond the majority of supposedly educated, intelligent and responsible people in my Dept.
 

slowmotion

Quite dreadful
Location
lost somewhere
It's quite an education to visit a MacDonald's car park. There are litter bins every few yards but about 25% is the visitors, having eaten in their cars, just lob the trash out of the window onto the tarmac. Sometimes they could reach the bin without even opening their car doors. It's utterly depressing.
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
So many people really don't give a stuff. Their take is that it's someone else's job to clear up and they're keeping them employed.

We lost all individual bins at work years ago, and we have groups of communal bins around the department for recycling: paper, confidential paper, general waste, plastic cups, plastic bottles/cans.

Unfortunately, people will just stuff all of their rubbish in the first bin they get to (even though the bins are grouped together in 'pods' so you're not having to walk to different places to get to the relevant bins). The 'Plastic Cups Only' bin seems to be the most popular for stuffing paper cups, crisp & paper bags, sandwich boxes, banana skins etc in. No matter how many appeals the company makes, folk just ignore them. The waste bill skyrocketed last year because all contaminated recycling has to go to landfill, and landfill has become very expensive. Sees some would rather see jobs cut to save money than take a second to put their waste in the corrrect bins.

Moving your hand 30cm to the left or right is beyond the majority of supposedly educated, intelligent and responsible people in my Dept.

Welcome to my world. Some of the worst offenders on our rounds for putting all sorts of random crap in recycling boxes are Uni students - supposed to be the bright young future of the nation. But utterly unable (or unwilling) to read a leaflet, or to think that if we leave something behind it's not recyclable and should be thrown in the rubbish, not left to fester at the bottom while more while is piled on top.

Every so often, we leave the worst offenders a note saying "Please remove these items from your box, they are not recyclable", and it usually works, for a week or so, and then the same old crap finds its way in again. Very occasionally we resort to filling a carrier bag with it and dumping it on the doorstep. We'd really like a garden shredder, with a hose attached, so that we could shred the lot and blow it back through their letter boxes...

I suppose I can understand people thinking all plastic goes in, although we clearly specify plastic bottles only in the info (a stipulation made by the company who pick the waste up from us). But really, half a pizza? a used sanitary towel? car parts?

And if you actually speak to someone - they happen to come out of the house as you're emptying the box or something - it's always someone else who put the rubbish in, honest.
 

goo_mason

Champion barbed-wire hurdler
Location
Leith, Edinburgh
What really annoys me most of all are the folk who dump half-filled cups of cold tea or coffee in the General Waste bin. There's a very special place in Hell reserved for them....
 
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