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Picking Up a Zillion Pieces of Litter
- skyberrys 7mo agoLittered across this website are countless gems and gotchas to make you think about the consequences of your purchases and actions. In particular the treasures he has found are quite surprising, 100 phones?! Just from looking for trash? The author is 47 I think and he's been doing stuff for 17 years. I have some of my own cool found trash collections too. The trash you find revels the personality of the place.
- somebehemoth 7mo ago10 bibles for another example. I have seen bibles a lot of places, but never as trash. He describes his giant ashtray and the tale of the tens of thousands of other pieces of trash he picked up on his way to one million cigarette butts. I love this guy and his website. This is what we gray beards mean when we speak of the Internet of old.
- autoexec 7mo agoI was surprised by the number of bibles too! I don't think I've ever seen one as litter (not counting those left in hotel rooms), but I've seen other kinds of religious literature like tracts, booklets, and watchtower magazines
- rmunn 7mo agoThat's the kind of thing that people like to hand out to people walking by. Many people, if handed a booklet they didn't actually want to read, will just toss it on the ground.
- zdragnar 7mo agoThose people are the worst. If you don't want something, don't take it. Don't make it everyone else's problem by littering.
- odo1242 7mo agoAs someone who has been pressured to take a book by random (mostly religious) people on a college campus, I wouldn't put the blame entirely on the person taking it.
- zdragnar 7mo agoIf you choose to accept a book because you are too uncomfortable to say the word "no" then you should accept that it is your responsibility to dispose of the book appropriately. Don't blame other people for your own bad behavior.
- rmunn 6mo agoBest thing, if you accepted the book but realize within a few steps (maybe immediately) that you didn't actually want it, would be to walk back to the person handing it out and say "Changed my mind, don't actually want it, why don't you give it to someone else?" I know some people who hand out religious tracts or other such materials, and every one of them that I know personally would accept the item back with good grace. They'd rather give it to someone who will actually read it. And if they're the kind of person who won't take it back with good grace? Place it on the ground right next to them, and walk away. Make it their responsibility to deal with it. (If you don't want to go out of your way to find a trash can: some public spaces make them easy to find, but others not so much).
- odo1242 6mo agoI didn’t say that I chose to accept the book and then threw it away. I said that I said no and the other person proceeded to drag out the interaction in a way that made everyone there uncomfortable.
- xnx 6mo ago> 100 phones?! Just from looking for trash? One scenario: Someone sets phone on top of car and drives off.
- autoexec 7mo agoI'm starting to suspect I might be cynical. I was pretty impressed at the "1,000,000 cigarette butts that I removed from the environment" but I couldn't help but think "moved into what?" which brought this (https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM) to mind: [Interviewer:] Into another environment…. [Senator Collins:] No, no, no. it’s been towed beyond the environment, it’s not in the environment [Interviewer:] Yeah, but from one environment to another environment. [Senator Collins:] No, it’s beyond the environment, it’s not in an environment. It has been towed beyond the environment. [Interviewer:] Well, what’s out there? [Senator Collins:] Nothing’s out there… Also, I couldn't help but wonder if he was removing trash at a faster rate than it was being added. Picking up litter is a good thing certainly, but we really need to get people to stop creating it in the first place. Even properly disposed of all that trash is a massive problem, but I'd love to see more effort getting people to clean up after themselves. A very long time ago I'd see PSAs with owls imploring us to "Give a hoot" and fake indians crying. Was that helpful? Does that kind of thing even exist today? Now that nobody watches TV are they pushed at kids on tiktok?
- c22 7mo agoIt looks like he might keep them in his own local environment for photo documentary / artistic purposes.
- autoexec 7mo agoHe's got to have a decent bit of land to keep it all which makes it all the more impressive that he found all that trash in his city.
- 7777777phil 7mo agoClassified multi-year contracts and government-funded compute are hard to walk away from when you're burning cash at that rate. Defense economics always do this to companies. Same thing that consolidated the primes in the 90s. Wrote about why the door only opens one way: https://philippdubach.com/posts/when-ai-labs-become-defense-contractors/ https://philippdubach.com/posts/when-ai-labs-become-defense-...
- 7mo ago
- Animats 7mo agoUse the right tool for the job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKHLG1iOBUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKHLG1iOBUA https://greenmachines.com/ https://greenmachines.com/
- bombcar 7mo agoBe sure to check the second page: https://www.sixstepstobetterhealth.com/money.html https://www.sixstepstobetterhealth.com/money.html If every person picked up a piece of litter a day, the world would be exceptionally cleaner quite quickly. I make a point to pick up any I see; you can carry dog waste bags if you're scared to touch things.
- mulmen 7mo agoWhat’s the safe way to handle heroin needles?
- Intermernet 7mo agoHave a sharps disposal container, wear gloves, avoid the pointy bit, sanitise regularly.
- SoftTalker 7mo agoSeem to me if you're picking up litter possibly including needles/syringes you don't want the sort of complicated sharps containers you see at a medical clinic, where you have to operate some sort of trap door mechanism. You want something simple, like a bucket, maybe with a funnel type opening, so that you can pick up the syringe with a grab tool and just drop it into the container with a minimum of handling or manuvering required. Doctors and nurses who are practiced at handling sharps still stick themselves occasionally. You really don't want to touch them with your hands, even with gloved hands.
- jrmg 7mo agoOur local municipal waste authority recommends using laundry detergent liquid bottles as sharps containers. Seems the FDA agrees they’re suitable: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/safely-using-sharps-needles-and-syringes-home-work-and-travel/sharps-disposal-containers https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/safely-using-sharps-need...
- true_religion 7mo ago
- OutOfHere 7mo agoI don't understand why the local governments do such a poor job at cleaning litter. Do they not understand how bad it is? In NYC, the Bronx is utterly filthy.
- bombcar 7mo agoIt's a cost center that people don't want to fund. And in some places like NYC you'd have to rival the police budget to make a dent in it.
- Forgeties79 7mo agoWould you though? As somebody else pointed out it could be a good public works/job creation program. You could probably put 4-5 people to work cleaning up a year for less than 1 cop. I’m kind of making up numbers here but I feel like that can’t be too far off what with salary, pension, equipment, etc. A few hundred people dedicated to taking care of litter would likely make a difference anywhere. You can get that for far less than $6 billion. You could pay 1000 people $1000/day to do it and you’d be at $365mill.
- kmoser 7mo agoThis works best when you pair it with promoting personal responsibility, otherwise you have to be careful it doesn't lead to the mindset of "I can throw this on the ground because it's somebody else's job to pick it up."
- Forgeties79 7mo agoPeople already throw things on the ground because it’s somebody else’s job to pick it up. It’s a culture issue broader than simply “personal responsibility.” People in the US don’t like to be inconvenienced or we tend to shriek about personal freedoms. In the US you likely need wildly punitive measures - not just small fines - to deal with the issue. Also would fall along party aligns with minutes and become a partisan issue immediately.
- esafak 7mo agoAt ten seconds each, it would take seventy straight days to collect all those cigarettes... And he had store all this trash just to take a picture.
- soupfordummies 7mo agoExactly. This dude is just the right kind of weird -- doing positive things but also following his offbeat muse just for the hell of it. EDIT: OMG, this may be my favorite website I've found in a WHILE! https://www.sixstepstobetterhealth.com/wheelbarrow.html https://www.sixstepstobetterhealth.com/wheelbarrow.html
- sebmellen 7mo agoPerhaps the coolest website I’ve seen this year. The amount of dedication is incredible. If you look at this cynically you will get nowhere, but if you realize something like this can inspire the next Boyan Slat, it’s fantastic.
- colinbartlett 7mo agoI thought so, too. I randomly found this on Reddit and it struck a chord with me, especially as an urban dweller that absolutely despises litter and litterers.
- ajxs 7mo agoI always bring bags/gloves/grabber with me whenever I visit the local national park. The rubbish is particularly bad in popular picnic spots, like the areas around Audley^1. The NPWS staff do a great job of keeping the parks clean, but they can't get everything. You'd be shocked how quickly you can fill a garbage bag on a short walk. The most common items by far are disposable coffee cups and cigarette packets (with nearly 100% imported packaging). Just make sure you're careful about snakes in summer. I once put my hand within striking distance when picking up a chip packet! Some of them are so well camouflaged. 1: https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/things-to-do/cafes-and-kiosks/audley-dance-hall-cafe https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/things-to-do/cafes-and-...
- Intermernet 7mo agoThanks mate, glad I'm not alone doing this. When my brother and I were young, my parents used to pay us 5 cents for every piece of rubbish we picked up on bushwalks. We got a few dollars to buy the things they would have invariably bought for us anyway, and the walking tracks became, for at least an hour or so, free from garbage.
- bananaboy 7mo agoI do this with my son when we go for a walk through our nearby reserve! I'm trying to teach him about nature and keeping our environment clean and how we live alongside nature and we should take care of it. He's pretty invested now which is great - when we forget to bring a bag he always mentions it, or if we're walking somewhere else like on the way to kinder he'll point out some rubbish and say we should have brought a bag with us.
- throw567643u8 7mo agoAudley and the Sutherland Shire was pristine growing up in the 80s. What's changed?
- ajxs 7mo agoAudley isn't actually that bad. I just had it in my mind because I visited there recently. You'll still find bits of rubbish around the place, but the NPWS do a great job keeping it clean. Unfortunately any nature area that gets a lot of people will just inevitably get a lot of rubbish.
- roflchoppa 7mo agoOne of these puppies and some plastic bags to get trash when I take walks. https://www.harborfreight.com/36-in-pickup-and-reach-tool-61413.html https://www.harborfreight.com/36-in-pickup-and-reach-tool-61...
- chihuahua 7mo agoI frequently walk 20 minutes from my house to a trailhead. Along the way, I often see annoying trash. Somehow, a freeway underpass (a road going underneath I-90) seems to be catnip to people who want to throw trash out of their cars. Eventually I got fed up and picked up a few bags full of trash. Then I found another guy nearby who also likes picking up trash, so we had a few get-togethers where we collect 3 trash bags each. He has a connection with our city sanitation department, so they come and pick up the bags. The same guy also runs a once-a-month litter pick up event where we meet at the post office and spend an hour picking up trash. He provides hi-viz vests, trash bags, and grabbers. Usually about 10 people show up. Overall it puts me in a bad mood to see so much trash thrown out by shitty people.
- Isamu 7mo agoThat Pepsi can is from the days before aluminum cans. And the pull tabs all separated completely. You would see thousands of those pull tabs everywhere you stopped your car, especially where you least wanted to see them, like in National Parks.
- fainpul 7mo agoReminds me of this scene in Mad Men: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDIvzDGBLWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDIvzDGBLWU
- RyanOD 7mo agoWe do this in the summer when we visit the shores of Lake Michigan. The amount of washed up junk we find is shocking.
- chao- 7mo agoIt only took him under one year to pick up the ONE MILLION cigarette butts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3gK-X32cy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3gK-X32cy8 He started in 2020 and the video summary was made in 2021.
- buildsjets 7mo agoIf he was picking butts (heh) every day for 8 hours a day, he’d have to pick a butt every 10 seconds. That seems like an implausible amount of butt picking.
- hapidjus 7mo agoAssumimg you pick them one by one. If you found a popular smoke spot I bet you could sweep up hundreds within minutes.
- chao- 7mo agoIf you watch the video, you'll see he shows a many dozens all in a small area, just within quick pan of the camera. He can probably pick up one per second for several minutes. That, or scoop them up in a huge bunch with a little bit of dirt, and sift them later. It's not that implausible. He even says he initially expected it would take a few years to reach one million.
- martin-adams 7mo agoWhat incredible work. I found his video on all the smoking products he found really interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3gK-X32cy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3gK-X32cy8
- antipollution 7mo agoI hope he comes to India and starts a movement, ideally leading to a public holiday tradition where everyone is supposed to pick up 10 pieces of litter.
- Hnrobert42 7mo agoI was super impressed that in Delhi there was no single use plastic. Little tongue depressor things instead of forks. Aluminum foil instead of plastic clam shells. Coming from Vietnam, it was amazing. I have no doubt there is a litter problem in India, but take heart. It's not all bad.
- random_ind_dude 7mo agoI don't think one has to wait for someone to start a movement. I pick up plastic bottles whenever I see them and drop them in the nearest trash bin that is meant for plastic bottles. I am in Kerala though, which is comparatively cleaner than the rest of India(except the north-eastern states). The Kerala government is pushing for better waste management now with more trash bins placed at public places and a state-wide effort to segregate waste at the source and collect it from homes. Still people litter with abandon and it's hard to change ingrained habits.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- diacritical 7mo agohttps://www.sixstepstobetterhealth.com/covid.html https://www.sixstepstobetterhealth.com/covid.html Why is the glove photo claiming censorship? Are the gloves arranged like letters or something? Am I missing a joke?
- Hnrobert42 7mo agoI can't explain the censorship claim. The gloves spell out, "stop throwing your gloves on the ground," per Claude.
- tomcatfish 7mo agoThat seems like it cannot be true? The words are 11, 5, 2, 12, 7, 7 letters long. It cannot be "stop throwing your gloves on the ground". The correct answer is XER?APUOBIA LEADS TO INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED CARROTS I do not know why you did not spot check the number of letters!
- diacritical 7mo agoAnother comments that's now dead gives us the most plausible answer: vabsbenz 34 minutes ago [dead] | parent | prev | next [–] In ASL the white gloves spell out "Germaphobia leads to individually wrapped carrots"
- tomcatfish 7mo agoAh, nice. Some of the gloves are very hard to read.
- Hnrobert42 7mo agoYou don't know why? It was about 7 am when I responded. I thought I was being helpful. I didn't realize the horse dentist was going to inspect my gift. Lol
- xorcist 6mo ago
- mhb 7mo agoDavid Sedaris has a similar hobby: https://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2014/jul/31/david-sedaris-litter-picker-rubbish-waste-vehicle-pig-pen-west-sussex https://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2014/jul/31/davi...
- babycheetahbite 7mo agoI purchased some "grabbers" and often go near the ponds in my neighborhood to pickup litter. There are a lot of two liter bottles which are full or half full to be found, normally right near the shore. The first couple of times I found these, I foolishly emptied them (thought this was a good idea since they are so heavy) and along with whatever kind of liquid was inside, AA batteries came out. I vaguely have memories as a child of trying to create "explosives" by putting batteries in a bottle and throwing them (after shaking everything up of course). Not sure if that is what is going on here but if so, kids haven't changed much. I am sure that the kids that put these together later regret it (like around dinner time same day), but couldn't retrieve their device for fear that it might "blow", and so they just have to hope it is deactivated with time. The item which to me is most baffling which I find in high volumes, is dental flossing sticks. These are commonly found everywhere around the ponds. I don't believe I have ever seen someone using a dental flossing stick in public. I have looked this up and I did find something suggesting that fisherman might use these as an all-purpose tool. Still not sure what this is all about.
- doublerabbit 7mo agoThe Homeless in my area of town use them and drop them on the street.
- assimpleaspossi 7mo agoI pick up any coin I find. It adds up to a few dollars every year.
- m-a-turner 7mo agoIs noone going to comment on the fact that the images are clearly AI generated?
- projektfu 7mo agoI picked up one of those Pepsi cans doing adopt-a-road once and I was impressed that an artifact from the 70s had remained undisturbed for that long.