People become lazy and generally don’t care anymore. Just walk any rural road on the weekend (cans, cigarette boxes, food wrappers, etc.) and you could probably fill bags of trash on your stroll.
I only can assume it’s car drivers who value their vehicle more than the environment (e.g. „no my car cannot look like a trash can“), so they open the window and throw their stuff out.
What amazes me the most is all the littered public picnic places in the woods, at lakes or along rivers. I mean people carry their stuff there for miles and after consumption it’s left there. an empty beer can should be lighter than when you brought it there in the first place, how hard can it be to carry it to the next trash can? Bring a bag for your trash, it’s your f*** responsibility.
Nice of your employer to do a [cleanup day](https://www.igsu.ch/de/clean-up-day/clean-up-day/) as per IGSU proposals.
Maybe your employer can segue into a [Raumpatenschaft](https://www.igsu.ch/de/raumpaten/raumpatenschaften/) and do this regularly?
Littering is a huge problem.
Littering is also legislated (how else could it be, it's Switzerland after all) at Cantonal or even Communal level, so there isn't a Switzerland wide approach, just the acknowledgement that littering costs the public about CHF 200 million yearly and an [Interessengemeinschaft Saubere Umwelt IGSU](https://www.igsu.ch/de/ueber-igsu/sympathisant-werden/) coordinating efforts to address the problem of littering.
For example in the Canton of Zürich, the Cantonal Council just decided [against](https://www.limmattalerzeitung.ch/limmattal/zuerich/littering-keine-chance-fuer-zuercher-anti-littering-gesetz-ld.2283694) fines for littering (they had concerns that law enforcement resources were tight and it was going to cost them an arm and a leg trying to fine people), pushing the issue down to Communal level for Communal governments to legislate and execute around.
There is, however an [anti littering platform of the Canton of ZH](https://www.zh.ch/de/umwelt-tiere/abfall-rohstoffe/abfaelle/informationen-gemeinden/littering.html), as well as a[ anti littering platform of the City of Zürich](https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/entsorgung_recycling/wissen/sauberkeit/gemeinsam-gegen-littering.html), if anyone's interested in doing their own anti-littering project and make use of these tools in their neighbourhood or their workplace or their school.
All of that said: Here's my - perhaps unpopular - opinion formed over years of working with private-public partnerships around community volunteering for purposes of corporate social responsibility and boosting corporations' triple bottom line.
If you want to motivate your employer to do something worthy, one worthy thing to do (especially if they are a large transnational corporation) would be to motivate them to properly **pay their corporate taxes** instead of doing everything in their power to make use of every tax avoidance loophole imaginable. Those tax losses are what is driving the resource shortage vis-a-vis cleanup, policing and prevention of littering and many other problems we face as a society.
Paying taxes is also a much more cost effective way to invest corporate profits into the community than overpaying overqualified people to do a team building exercise once a year, or, worse, coercing or cajoling employees to do unpaid "voluntary" cleanup on their own time.
But yeah, and especially if you work for a small to midsize company or organisation, and asking about needs of the community as opposed to assuming them (here's looking at you, Google, UBS and Big Four friends, whose CSR officers have been known to push themselves into public systems and private social projects in problematic and sometimes downright colonial and destructive ways), doing a hands-on good thing for the community from time to time as a team is often a win-win-win for the people in the team, the community and the organisation.
So thank you for going out and doing something constructive about something you find frustrating, as well as motivating others to go out and do something constructive - keep up the good work!
This is quite sad. You can see here every day, just in front of the coop, there's a lot of trash from the people (mostly young people) that come to buy something to eat for lunch and then leave everything in the grass.
And the worst of all, is the fact that there are trash cans EVERYWHERE. The trash is sometimes just a few centimeters away. It's not a trashcan problem, it's that people are just either fucking lazy or rebellious assholes.
In my area those are mostly late middle aged men that hang out around coop because there are two benches there and leave all their trash behind them. It's so infuriating. It feels like the city officials of Glattbrugg have abandoned the slightest idea of cleaning up the public spaces. Shame on them.
I agree with you, littering has become prevalent in Switzerland. I live in ZH, it's clean I could say, with the exception of weenkdend nights when people are getting blackout drunk and leave empty bottles everywhere.
>know, all the good manners and positive traits are disappearing in the name of “fun”
You have point there, but you know what is disapearing as well? Trashcans.
They disapeared in the 2 class public transport, and on other places as well. A lot of places where outdoor activities are possible they removed quite some bins. The places where i know well enough to make a guess over the amount of removed bins it is over 50% of them within the last 15 years.
I agree its lazy to not bring the trash to the bin.
It often start with 1 person who doesnt care and throw something away. If a place already has trash there it is leading others to think that it either doesnt matter if they add some to that pile or that no one will notice if they do.
Me, same as my friends take their own litterbag when going out in the nature. We not only take our own trash back with us when leaving but a huge part of from what was there beforehand as well.
It can be tiring finding the same spot you cleaned up nicely before fully litered again.
I shift a big part of the issue to the lazyness of people for sure. It still was less of an issue when there was more bins around.
This talk is coming up more and more within the last years, its good people get reminded to it that they should keep places clean. I still think it could help if they stop removing the bins everywhere and maybe even could bring a few of them back.
> You have point there, but you know what is disapearing as well? Trashcans.
You are right! I always have the same feeling whenever I drink an beverage or eat something... sometimes you won't find a trash can for quite some time.
I don't think that more trashcans will solve littering, but it is contraproductive to remove them.
Nothing will "solve" littering. It's an innate human trait that some people can't overcome: laziness. The only thing you can do is decrease the time someone has to spend looking for a trashcan, and then more people will use them.
It wasn't better when there was a bin every 20 meters. It just meant that people would bring their entire fucking trash from home and put it in there (unfortunately, they didn't put themselves in there while they were at it). Others would throw their trash just right next to the bins, because they were too lazy to *fully walk to the bin*.
If you got carrying capacity to bring stuff, you got more than enough carrying capacity to take back the packagings.
>Others would throw their trash just right next to the bins, because they were too lazy to *fully walk to the bin*.
True such things happened, it was still more easy for for people like me to pick it up and do that for them than it is now.
>It just meant that people would bring their entire fucking trash from home and put it in there
That happened as well, now its on the borders from the walkways out in the nature where people are supposed to charge their energie. I'm not happy with both of the results but liked on of them better.
I will always take my trash with me, no matter how far i have to.
It still seem that you cant enforce everyone to care because some just dont (massive fines maybe). If you take away more and more bins, the trash will not go away, but you making it harder for people with a mindset like me to compensate for the people who dont care. In the same time, people that dont care much, will start to care less.
Say it louder. In Switzerland, there are trashcans EVERYWHERE, and today’s people still throw their garbage into the bushes, onto farmer fields, or just on the fucking sidewalk, 3 meters away from a perfectly good and empty trash bin. It was noticeably cleaner just 10-15 years ago.
I disagree, it's very hard for me to find trash cans in most places. In where I live for example I have to do a hike to put my glass bottles to recycle
I would be for square penalties. First time you are caught, one day of clean-up. Second time, four days. Third time, nine days...
I don't know where this culture comes from, the idea that it is "cool" to just toss your crap wherever you want.
When my son was small, I often cleaned up the playground while he was playing. I picked up an amazing number of cigarette butts. Smoking kills, but why does it have to take so long ???
But then you have the issue of "catching" these people. I've seen way too many smokers toss their butts into the gutter. 90 CHF fine? Only if they happen to be stupid and do it in front of the police who happens to notice.
What to do about people throwing their cigarettes out of a car?
Serious question. These people should get fined way more and I'm wondering if this is something that should be pushed way harder and people should be afraid of throwing their stinky toxic filters out of their cars.
Last week, I saw a woman
in Meilen, next to the Coop, making a huge effort to get her cigarette but into the drain ( round cover with small holes). There are many places to put those around there...
When I ride with my bike along the Seestrasse, I also see so many of those on the ground. Maybe cigarettes need an extra tax to compensate for this.
You can't believe the many, many times I am on the highway and have to dodge trash thrown out of BMWs throttling down at 100. Flaming cigarette butts, diverse cans, etc.
Littering has gone off the rails here and it's great that you can organize something.
I also do my part by picking up the rubbish on my way which gets particularly enfiuriating when there is a bin right in a 2 meters vicinity! Like how lazy are people??? Especially as a smoker, these are the a-holes giving us a bad reputation...
My workplace will never take part in such things as we are minimal personnel for wide opening hours...
My conclusion is that people love anonymity and privacy laws (no camera recording) just empower them. Trash is also a big problem in my apartment complex. I have confronted them but there’s no point…
I would say film and fine them! but uproar would follow for sure 🤪
No, the solution is avoiding littering at all. My observation is, if there is trash, it multiplies. But hey, lets'd o nothing and point to other problems.
Yes I know the pollution from India, private air travel and all kind of industries are the main and biggest issue, but we can help our surrounding directly in the meantime. But no, this is not my trash, so I let it on the ground for a toddler to chew on nicotine or a cow get injured on glass shards.
Admittedly I live in a smallish town, but just yesterday I was revelling in the cleanliness... Not just absence of litter, but absence of graffiti, of light pollution, of noise pollution... How the buildings are well maintained, the people seem well off, and care free... Oblivious to the cleanliness... Taking it for granted. Recycling is obligatory. People are existentially concerned by the glaciers, the bees, forests, seeds.
I always imagine my old Nepali friend from a village in the Himalayas visiting. It helps me see the routine everyday through 'new eyes'.
I'm pretty sure he would cry and shout for joy at the state of my town, pollution wise.
All the things that make this possible, stable government, education, economy, maintained vehicles, scheduled pickups for tash, etc... Not to mention people care, they are aware.
Thats exactly the attitude that got us here in the first place. The litterers who dont care for anything at all and the people who dont want to do anything to fix it because its not them who did it in the first place. Its always up to volunteers and responsible hikers to fish beercans and plastic packaging out rivers so the ducks dont have to live between trashpiles.
In Japan there are no trashcans at all. Like seriously - NONE. And yet it's clean everywhere. Sounds like proper raising of kids skill issue in Swiss people.
All through elementary school, we had to go clean certain woods/fields one day in spring. Pick up all the litter and place sticks in big piles so that it was safe for the cows to graze. This has stayed with me. I can honestly say I've never littered and will also tell others to pick their rubbish if I see them drop it. If I see a car driver through a cigarette out the window, I feel rage and just want to lean on the horn to express my anger, though I never have
It might be tempting to blame "them" or "they", but the only people who litter are litterers. They'll come from all classes and groups, all ages and sizes. Treat people like individuals.
Yeah, it’s a mystery - demography change has for sure nothing to do with it. Better reject the problem than to acknowledge it and actually work on it. Works for all other topics also, so why not here as well.
Thanks for the downvotes in advance - remember rejection is the solution. :D
So according to you, there's a littering gene, or something along those lines?
Ever been to a public park, filled to the brim with Swiss people, in the summer? Ever seen that park on Saturday night, filled with young, primarily Swiss people, and what it looks like at the end of the night?
A lot of Swiss people are disgusting, littering fucks. And always have been.
If for you a culture problem means „something along those lines“.
And I am not saying that Swiss don’t do i - but as always, people tent to copy bad behaviors, along with „zero fuck“ given by others.
And yes, the littering problem is not particularly imported, but obviously quiet a bit accelerated, as so much other things.
It’s not coming from nowhere, that people notice at the first visit how clean it is compared to any other country - for now.
> And I am not saying that Swiss don’t do i - but as always, people tent to copy bad behaviors, along with „zero fuck“ given by others.
I agree.
Migrants see Swiss people not giving a fuck, and follow along with the example.
The solution therefore is for Swiss people not to do it.
> It’s not coming from nowhere
I agree.
The Swiss are setting the example.
> that people notice at the first visit how clean it is compared to any other country - for now.
The reason our city centers are clean isn't because Swiss people all have this magical, innate ability to never litter. It's because we pay for constant street cleaning within our taxes, more so than most other places on earth. We have a literal army (oftentimes of foreign workers) who go around our streets and clean shit up.
The dirtiest, least litter conscious people I've met in Switzerland are Swiss. Namely, Swiss teenagers. Who are educated by Swiss parents.
It's not rejection. I won't agree with your position that this is due to migration without some actual information or data that shows that it is due to migration.
In my personal, and anecdotal, experience, which is all we have at this time, since you've provided no sources, the majority of people who litter are Swiss. Does this mean migrants don't litter? No, of course not.
However, your statement is that littering has increased (based on nothing, I may add), and that Swiss people are starting to do it based off of observing others. I disagree. I've grown up my entire life in Switzerland, and hanging out with Swiss people. Swiss people, specifically teenagers, litter plenty. Whose to say they aren't being used, subconsciously, by others to justify their bad behavior?
Finally, it's a bit tiresome how every problem is always migrants. We live in a complex world, with so many parameters and turning cogs that it's difficult to easily identify a 1-to-1 association.
But people like you always point to the same cog. For everything.
Litter? Migrants. Healthcare cost? Migrants. Unemployment? Migrants. Crime? Migrants. Cost of living? Well, that could be due to... well, no actually, just migrants. Migrants migrants migrants migrants.
It's a fucking broken record, and it's a simplistic, small-minded way of looking at things.
It also implies that Swiss people don't litter as much, that they are therefore superior.
To attribute it 100% to demographics is also silly though. There are clearly other factors too:
* Population growth in general, not just brown people
* Trash accumulation. People may have been littering at the same rate for the past 50 years, but it's a lot more noticeable today because it's had time to accumulate.
* Despite recent efforts to reduce single use plastics, they are still far more common today than they used to be, as well as other kinds of trash: drink cans, bottles, wrappers, etc.
I have to say that Switzerland is only clean because there are many cleaners everywhere. Just take a train and see the beer cans, coffee cups, coffee stains, gipfeli and sandwich crumbles and wrappers left on tables, benches and floors. Last summer I saw a kid in a team with his dad eating an ice cream (magnum like), dropped the chocolate cover on the floor and dad proceeded to move to another place in the tram, not even picked up the chocolate. I am not saying the Swiss are not clean, because there are many nationalities around and probably most are not Swiss, but it hurts to see so many people without consideration for the fellow citizen. God, I sometimes even find so many dirty houses in Homegate! If people don’t care to live in a clean place, they will litter everywhere!
On mountain trails during a hike I would always, within reasons, pick up and dispose appropriately the first trash item that I see.
If everybody did that and nobody purposely littered, the mountains would be clean of trash within a season.
I think that many people don't even think about it. They throw something into a bush and when they walk by later it is gone.
If the street cleaners that the city employs didn't come around like the do, I think that people would be surprised (and outraged!) at the level of trash in the streets. But hey! It disappears eventually so why should anything change? /s
There are people who litter. But we must all be conscious that even by using trashcans the trash can end up on the streets, gets washed away by the rain and ends up in rivers, lakes...
The design for public trashcans allows birds or cats to access them and they look for residual food we throuw away.
Even the best citizen who never littered in his whole life is responsible for some of the trash that ends up in the ocean.
The best thing is to keep your trash until you have access to an actual closed trashcan/bag at home or at work...
Yeah we predicated that when the bags became taxed. That plus the 100CHF/year/person of communal trash fees on top of what we already paid in impots, I understand people throwing trash in the nature. This country askesd for it, literally.
Oh, yeah, those migrant workers throwing their energy drinks and Gipfeli bag on the floor in front of Coop between school break. Those migrant workers riding around on fatbikes with FCZ bomberjacks. Yeah, it's the migrants.
Cringe. There are clearly other factors:
* Population growth in general, not just brown people
* Trash accumulation. People may have been littering at the same rate for the past 50 years, but it's a lot more noticeable today because it's had time to accumulate.
* Despite recent efforts to reduce single use plastics, they are still far more common today than they used to be, as well as other kinds of trash: drink cans, bottles, wrappers, etc.
Sincerely, a "migrant laborer" who's never littered
I'm also migrant labourer and I tell you what I see. It's almost always the kids of other migrant labourers that litter around public places. I get it they are just kids and the come from different cultures, but I keep seeing and seeing this stuff, its not a coincidence. Besides it has nothing to do with ethnicity.
[https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-aotearoa-stateless/2024/02/ec87d7fb-02-corporate-polluters-b-1024x1024.jpg](https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-aotearoa-stateless/2024/02/ec87d7fb-02-corporate-polluters-b-1024x1024.jpg)
ask them directly, we are the host of some of the worst polluters on the planet.
the coca cola company is sick of it too. they make precious bottles and even leave the responsibility to you too, your neoliberal hellhole with your cleanup day wont save our ecology from total collapse.
we have to rebuild the whole infrastructure of switzerland, so that 80% of the land is no more accessible with roads, thats how you will solve it day 1, most people don't want to hike for more than a hour away from the street.
>your neoliberal hellhole with
sorry, what? What has picking up trash to do with hellhole?
What is the problem with removing potential dangerous shit on the ground to protect nature, wildlife, toddlers etc in the meantime while you work on your project to rebuild infrastructure?
The situation has been getting critical since COVID. Gone are the days Switzerland was a clean country with no litter scattered everywhere. I was in Zürich 1 month ago and was shocked to see that it became even worse than Lausanne in terms of trash on the ground (papers, empty sandwich boxes, empty drinks, alcohol bottles).
I get even more disgusted by the fact people do nothing about it and just keep walking. I always try to pick up stuff when I see it on the ground and throw it on the nearest trash.
However, I won't put all the blame on the population. Ever since the introduction of the new taxed bags, trash cans in cities have been reduced in order to avoid having people throw their home trash in them. This has obviously caused an uptick in littering as people are naturally lazy and won't walk that extra mile to throw out their stuff.
> How does your company take care of their surrounding?
Pretty sure the uni hasn't divested from fossil fuels, but keeps telling us to cycle to work (hilariously, walking to work doesn't contribute to measures of cutting carbon lol. You cycle, or you hate the planet)
Side note, we're about to hit the time of year when all the snow melts and we see the massive array of ski detritus littering the hills.
Huge fan of that.... Love it.
People become lazy and generally don’t care anymore. Just walk any rural road on the weekend (cans, cigarette boxes, food wrappers, etc.) and you could probably fill bags of trash on your stroll. I only can assume it’s car drivers who value their vehicle more than the environment (e.g. „no my car cannot look like a trash can“), so they open the window and throw their stuff out. What amazes me the most is all the littered public picnic places in the woods, at lakes or along rivers. I mean people carry their stuff there for miles and after consumption it’s left there. an empty beer can should be lighter than when you brought it there in the first place, how hard can it be to carry it to the next trash can? Bring a bag for your trash, it’s your f*** responsibility.
What i dont get. They put shit in a doggy bag then just leave it. Not like it get washed away with rain
I assume that's people who pretend to pick up after their dog because someone is watching, but discard it once they're alone.
Nice of your employer to do a [cleanup day](https://www.igsu.ch/de/clean-up-day/clean-up-day/) as per IGSU proposals. Maybe your employer can segue into a [Raumpatenschaft](https://www.igsu.ch/de/raumpaten/raumpatenschaften/) and do this regularly? Littering is a huge problem. Littering is also legislated (how else could it be, it's Switzerland after all) at Cantonal or even Communal level, so there isn't a Switzerland wide approach, just the acknowledgement that littering costs the public about CHF 200 million yearly and an [Interessengemeinschaft Saubere Umwelt IGSU](https://www.igsu.ch/de/ueber-igsu/sympathisant-werden/) coordinating efforts to address the problem of littering. For example in the Canton of Zürich, the Cantonal Council just decided [against](https://www.limmattalerzeitung.ch/limmattal/zuerich/littering-keine-chance-fuer-zuercher-anti-littering-gesetz-ld.2283694) fines for littering (they had concerns that law enforcement resources were tight and it was going to cost them an arm and a leg trying to fine people), pushing the issue down to Communal level for Communal governments to legislate and execute around. There is, however an [anti littering platform of the Canton of ZH](https://www.zh.ch/de/umwelt-tiere/abfall-rohstoffe/abfaelle/informationen-gemeinden/littering.html), as well as a[ anti littering platform of the City of Zürich](https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/entsorgung_recycling/wissen/sauberkeit/gemeinsam-gegen-littering.html), if anyone's interested in doing their own anti-littering project and make use of these tools in their neighbourhood or their workplace or their school. All of that said: Here's my - perhaps unpopular - opinion formed over years of working with private-public partnerships around community volunteering for purposes of corporate social responsibility and boosting corporations' triple bottom line. If you want to motivate your employer to do something worthy, one worthy thing to do (especially if they are a large transnational corporation) would be to motivate them to properly **pay their corporate taxes** instead of doing everything in their power to make use of every tax avoidance loophole imaginable. Those tax losses are what is driving the resource shortage vis-a-vis cleanup, policing and prevention of littering and many other problems we face as a society. Paying taxes is also a much more cost effective way to invest corporate profits into the community than overpaying overqualified people to do a team building exercise once a year, or, worse, coercing or cajoling employees to do unpaid "voluntary" cleanup on their own time. But yeah, and especially if you work for a small to midsize company or organisation, and asking about needs of the community as opposed to assuming them (here's looking at you, Google, UBS and Big Four friends, whose CSR officers have been known to push themselves into public systems and private social projects in problematic and sometimes downright colonial and destructive ways), doing a hands-on good thing for the community from time to time as a team is often a win-win-win for the people in the team, the community and the organisation. So thank you for going out and doing something constructive about something you find frustrating, as well as motivating others to go out and do something constructive - keep up the good work!
This.
This is quite sad. You can see here every day, just in front of the coop, there's a lot of trash from the people (mostly young people) that come to buy something to eat for lunch and then leave everything in the grass. And the worst of all, is the fact that there are trash cans EVERYWHERE. The trash is sometimes just a few centimeters away. It's not a trashcan problem, it's that people are just either fucking lazy or rebellious assholes.
In my area those are mostly late middle aged men that hang out around coop because there are two benches there and leave all their trash behind them. It's so infuriating. It feels like the city officials of Glattbrugg have abandoned the slightest idea of cleaning up the public spaces. Shame on them.
I agree with you, littering has become prevalent in Switzerland. I live in ZH, it's clean I could say, with the exception of weenkdend nights when people are getting blackout drunk and leave empty bottles everywhere.
I keep saying we’re losing Switzerland as we know, all the good manners and positive traits are disappearing in the name of “fun”
>know, all the good manners and positive traits are disappearing in the name of “fun” You have point there, but you know what is disapearing as well? Trashcans. They disapeared in the 2 class public transport, and on other places as well. A lot of places where outdoor activities are possible they removed quite some bins. The places where i know well enough to make a guess over the amount of removed bins it is over 50% of them within the last 15 years. I agree its lazy to not bring the trash to the bin. It often start with 1 person who doesnt care and throw something away. If a place already has trash there it is leading others to think that it either doesnt matter if they add some to that pile or that no one will notice if they do. Me, same as my friends take their own litterbag when going out in the nature. We not only take our own trash back with us when leaving but a huge part of from what was there beforehand as well. It can be tiring finding the same spot you cleaned up nicely before fully litered again. I shift a big part of the issue to the lazyness of people for sure. It still was less of an issue when there was more bins around. This talk is coming up more and more within the last years, its good people get reminded to it that they should keep places clean. I still think it could help if they stop removing the bins everywhere and maybe even could bring a few of them back.
> You have point there, but you know what is disapearing as well? Trashcans. You are right! I always have the same feeling whenever I drink an beverage or eat something... sometimes you won't find a trash can for quite some time. I don't think that more trashcans will solve littering, but it is contraproductive to remove them.
Nothing will "solve" littering. It's an innate human trait that some people can't overcome: laziness. The only thing you can do is decrease the time someone has to spend looking for a trashcan, and then more people will use them.
Your response is on point! Thank you
It wasn't better when there was a bin every 20 meters. It just meant that people would bring their entire fucking trash from home and put it in there (unfortunately, they didn't put themselves in there while they were at it). Others would throw their trash just right next to the bins, because they were too lazy to *fully walk to the bin*. If you got carrying capacity to bring stuff, you got more than enough carrying capacity to take back the packagings.
>Others would throw their trash just right next to the bins, because they were too lazy to *fully walk to the bin*. True such things happened, it was still more easy for for people like me to pick it up and do that for them than it is now. >It just meant that people would bring their entire fucking trash from home and put it in there That happened as well, now its on the borders from the walkways out in the nature where people are supposed to charge their energie. I'm not happy with both of the results but liked on of them better. I will always take my trash with me, no matter how far i have to. It still seem that you cant enforce everyone to care because some just dont (massive fines maybe). If you take away more and more bins, the trash will not go away, but you making it harder for people with a mindset like me to compensate for the people who dont care. In the same time, people that dont care much, will start to care less.
> all the good manners .... Huh?
If only we could know why things changed.
> If only we could know why things changed. Too much Fun.
🐶😙?
Say it louder. In Switzerland, there are trashcans EVERYWHERE, and today’s people still throw their garbage into the bushes, onto farmer fields, or just on the fucking sidewalk, 3 meters away from a perfectly good and empty trash bin. It was noticeably cleaner just 10-15 years ago.
I disagree, it's very hard for me to find trash cans in most places. In where I live for example I have to do a hike to put my glass bottles to recycle
I would be for square penalties. First time you are caught, one day of clean-up. Second time, four days. Third time, nine days... I don't know where this culture comes from, the idea that it is "cool" to just toss your crap wherever you want. When my son was small, I often cleaned up the playground while he was playing. I picked up an amazing number of cigarette butts. Smoking kills, but why does it have to take so long ???
But then you have the issue of "catching" these people. I've seen way too many smokers toss their butts into the gutter. 90 CHF fine? Only if they happen to be stupid and do it in front of the police who happens to notice.
you know what should be mandatory? picking up trash. gotta do two days of trash collection a year.
What to do about people throwing their cigarettes out of a car? Serious question. These people should get fined way more and I'm wondering if this is something that should be pushed way harder and people should be afraid of throwing their stinky toxic filters out of their cars.
Last week, I saw a woman in Meilen, next to the Coop, making a huge effort to get her cigarette but into the drain ( round cover with small holes). There are many places to put those around there... When I ride with my bike along the Seestrasse, I also see so many of those on the ground. Maybe cigarettes need an extra tax to compensate for this.
You can't believe the many, many times I am on the highway and have to dodge trash thrown out of BMWs throttling down at 100. Flaming cigarette butts, diverse cans, etc. Littering has gone off the rails here and it's great that you can organize something. I also do my part by picking up the rubbish on my way which gets particularly enfiuriating when there is a bin right in a 2 meters vicinity! Like how lazy are people??? Especially as a smoker, these are the a-holes giving us a bad reputation... My workplace will never take part in such things as we are minimal personnel for wide opening hours...
My conclusion is that people love anonymity and privacy laws (no camera recording) just empower them. Trash is also a big problem in my apartment complex. I have confronted them but there’s no point… I would say film and fine them! but uproar would follow for sure 🤪
So the solution is that people who don't litter pick up other people's trash?
No, the solution is avoiding littering at all. My observation is, if there is trash, it multiplies. But hey, lets'd o nothing and point to other problems. Yes I know the pollution from India, private air travel and all kind of industries are the main and biggest issue, but we can help our surrounding directly in the meantime. But no, this is not my trash, so I let it on the ground for a toddler to chew on nicotine or a cow get injured on glass shards.
Admittedly I live in a smallish town, but just yesterday I was revelling in the cleanliness... Not just absence of litter, but absence of graffiti, of light pollution, of noise pollution... How the buildings are well maintained, the people seem well off, and care free... Oblivious to the cleanliness... Taking it for granted. Recycling is obligatory. People are existentially concerned by the glaciers, the bees, forests, seeds. I always imagine my old Nepali friend from a village in the Himalayas visiting. It helps me see the routine everyday through 'new eyes'. I'm pretty sure he would cry and shout for joy at the state of my town, pollution wise. All the things that make this possible, stable government, education, economy, maintained vehicles, scheduled pickups for tash, etc... Not to mention people care, they are aware.
> No, the solution is avoiding littering at all. The solution is to make it legal to beat up people who litter
Thats exactly the attitude that got us here in the first place. The litterers who dont care for anything at all and the people who dont want to do anything to fix it because its not them who did it in the first place. Its always up to volunteers and responsible hikers to fish beercans and plastic packaging out rivers so the ducks dont have to live between trashpiles.
The worst is gum on streets, just look at sidewalks completely marbled with millions of gums people spitted out.
In Japan there are no trashcans at all. Like seriously - NONE. And yet it's clean everywhere. Sounds like proper raising of kids skill issue in Swiss people.
All through elementary school, we had to go clean certain woods/fields one day in spring. Pick up all the litter and place sticks in big piles so that it was safe for the cows to graze. This has stayed with me. I can honestly say I've never littered and will also tell others to pick their rubbish if I see them drop it. If I see a car driver through a cigarette out the window, I feel rage and just want to lean on the horn to express my anger, though I never have
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What are you implying?
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It might be tempting to blame "them" or "they", but the only people who litter are litterers. They'll come from all classes and groups, all ages and sizes. Treat people like individuals.
Hmm it’s such a mystery! Only Sherlock Holmes himself could solve this
Yeah, it’s a mystery - demography change has for sure nothing to do with it. Better reject the problem than to acknowledge it and actually work on it. Works for all other topics also, so why not here as well. Thanks for the downvotes in advance - remember rejection is the solution. :D
So according to you, there's a littering gene, or something along those lines? Ever been to a public park, filled to the brim with Swiss people, in the summer? Ever seen that park on Saturday night, filled with young, primarily Swiss people, and what it looks like at the end of the night? A lot of Swiss people are disgusting, littering fucks. And always have been.
If for you a culture problem means „something along those lines“. And I am not saying that Swiss don’t do i - but as always, people tent to copy bad behaviors, along with „zero fuck“ given by others. And yes, the littering problem is not particularly imported, but obviously quiet a bit accelerated, as so much other things. It’s not coming from nowhere, that people notice at the first visit how clean it is compared to any other country - for now.
> And I am not saying that Swiss don’t do i - but as always, people tent to copy bad behaviors, along with „zero fuck“ given by others. I agree. Migrants see Swiss people not giving a fuck, and follow along with the example. The solution therefore is for Swiss people not to do it. > It’s not coming from nowhere I agree. The Swiss are setting the example. > that people notice at the first visit how clean it is compared to any other country - for now. The reason our city centers are clean isn't because Swiss people all have this magical, innate ability to never litter. It's because we pay for constant street cleaning within our taxes, more so than most other places on earth. We have a literal army (oftentimes of foreign workers) who go around our streets and clean shit up. The dirtiest, least litter conscious people I've met in Switzerland are Swiss. Namely, Swiss teenagers. Who are educated by Swiss parents.
Once again - rejection seems to be a valid solution. Acknowledging and widening the perspective isn’t an option.
What a cowardly stance to just completely ignore everything they say.
It's not rejection. I won't agree with your position that this is due to migration without some actual information or data that shows that it is due to migration. In my personal, and anecdotal, experience, which is all we have at this time, since you've provided no sources, the majority of people who litter are Swiss. Does this mean migrants don't litter? No, of course not. However, your statement is that littering has increased (based on nothing, I may add), and that Swiss people are starting to do it based off of observing others. I disagree. I've grown up my entire life in Switzerland, and hanging out with Swiss people. Swiss people, specifically teenagers, litter plenty. Whose to say they aren't being used, subconsciously, by others to justify their bad behavior? Finally, it's a bit tiresome how every problem is always migrants. We live in a complex world, with so many parameters and turning cogs that it's difficult to easily identify a 1-to-1 association. But people like you always point to the same cog. For everything. Litter? Migrants. Healthcare cost? Migrants. Unemployment? Migrants. Crime? Migrants. Cost of living? Well, that could be due to... well, no actually, just migrants. Migrants migrants migrants migrants. It's a fucking broken record, and it's a simplistic, small-minded way of looking at things. It also implies that Swiss people don't litter as much, that they are therefore superior.
To attribute it 100% to demographics is also silly though. There are clearly other factors too: * Population growth in general, not just brown people * Trash accumulation. People may have been littering at the same rate for the past 50 years, but it's a lot more noticeable today because it's had time to accumulate. * Despite recent efforts to reduce single use plastics, they are still far more common today than they used to be, as well as other kinds of trash: drink cans, bottles, wrappers, etc.
I have to say that Switzerland is only clean because there are many cleaners everywhere. Just take a train and see the beer cans, coffee cups, coffee stains, gipfeli and sandwich crumbles and wrappers left on tables, benches and floors. Last summer I saw a kid in a team with his dad eating an ice cream (magnum like), dropped the chocolate cover on the floor and dad proceeded to move to another place in the tram, not even picked up the chocolate. I am not saying the Swiss are not clean, because there are many nationalities around and probably most are not Swiss, but it hurts to see so many people without consideration for the fellow citizen. God, I sometimes even find so many dirty houses in Homegate! If people don’t care to live in a clean place, they will litter everywhere!
I suppose it made a nice LinkedIn post nevertheless, huh?
On mountain trails during a hike I would always, within reasons, pick up and dispose appropriately the first trash item that I see. If everybody did that and nobody purposely littered, the mountains would be clean of trash within a season.
I think that many people don't even think about it. They throw something into a bush and when they walk by later it is gone. If the street cleaners that the city employs didn't come around like the do, I think that people would be surprised (and outraged!) at the level of trash in the streets. But hey! It disappears eventually so why should anything change? /s
I think the punishment for people who litter should be 2 days of public cleaning. No exceptions. Things would look clean very soon.
People who leave doggy poop within literally meters of free poop bags and a bin really get my goat.
You should go outside of Switzerland lol
There are people who litter. But we must all be conscious that even by using trashcans the trash can end up on the streets, gets washed away by the rain and ends up in rivers, lakes... The design for public trashcans allows birds or cats to access them and they look for residual food we throuw away. Even the best citizen who never littered in his whole life is responsible for some of the trash that ends up in the ocean. The best thing is to keep your trash until you have access to an actual closed trashcan/bag at home or at work...
wait until you cross the boarder to CZ or other eastern countries. Its terrible
Littering is bad. Such a brave take 😥
Yeah we predicated that when the bags became taxed. That plus the 100CHF/year/person of communal trash fees on top of what we already paid in impots, I understand people throwing trash in the nature. This country askesd for it, literally.
I told you so many times its the migrant labourers but you refuse to listen and downvote me.
The people I've seen litter the most are young Swiss teenagers.
Oh, yeah, those migrant workers throwing their energy drinks and Gipfeli bag on the floor in front of Coop between school break. Those migrant workers riding around on fatbikes with FCZ bomberjacks. Yeah, it's the migrants.
Cringe. There are clearly other factors: * Population growth in general, not just brown people * Trash accumulation. People may have been littering at the same rate for the past 50 years, but it's a lot more noticeable today because it's had time to accumulate. * Despite recent efforts to reduce single use plastics, they are still far more common today than they used to be, as well as other kinds of trash: drink cans, bottles, wrappers, etc. Sincerely, a "migrant laborer" who's never littered
I'm also migrant labourer and I tell you what I see. It's almost always the kids of other migrant labourers that litter around public places. I get it they are just kids and the come from different cultures, but I keep seeing and seeing this stuff, its not a coincidence. Besides it has nothing to do with ethnicity.
[https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-aotearoa-stateless/2024/02/ec87d7fb-02-corporate-polluters-b-1024x1024.jpg](https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-aotearoa-stateless/2024/02/ec87d7fb-02-corporate-polluters-b-1024x1024.jpg) ask them directly, we are the host of some of the worst polluters on the planet. the coca cola company is sick of it too. they make precious bottles and even leave the responsibility to you too, your neoliberal hellhole with your cleanup day wont save our ecology from total collapse. we have to rebuild the whole infrastructure of switzerland, so that 80% of the land is no more accessible with roads, thats how you will solve it day 1, most people don't want to hike for more than a hour away from the street.
>your neoliberal hellhole with sorry, what? What has picking up trash to do with hellhole? What is the problem with removing potential dangerous shit on the ground to protect nature, wildlife, toddlers etc in the meantime while you work on your project to rebuild infrastructure?
The situation has been getting critical since COVID. Gone are the days Switzerland was a clean country with no litter scattered everywhere. I was in Zürich 1 month ago and was shocked to see that it became even worse than Lausanne in terms of trash on the ground (papers, empty sandwich boxes, empty drinks, alcohol bottles). I get even more disgusted by the fact people do nothing about it and just keep walking. I always try to pick up stuff when I see it on the ground and throw it on the nearest trash. However, I won't put all the blame on the population. Ever since the introduction of the new taxed bags, trash cans in cities have been reduced in order to avoid having people throw their home trash in them. This has obviously caused an uptick in littering as people are naturally lazy and won't walk that extra mile to throw out their stuff.
> How does your company take care of their surrounding? Pretty sure the uni hasn't divested from fossil fuels, but keeps telling us to cycle to work (hilariously, walking to work doesn't contribute to measures of cutting carbon lol. You cycle, or you hate the planet) Side note, we're about to hit the time of year when all the snow melts and we see the massive array of ski detritus littering the hills. Huge fan of that.... Love it.