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Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

In London, the “war on litter bins” (removal of litter bins from train stations and central areas, supposedly to prevent them being misused by terrorists) has created a culture of simply leaving litter on the floor or in the street because there are no bins to put it in.

Perhaps that’s ok in busy central locations where a street cleaner will be along shortly to pick it up, but the problem is that people are now accustomed to dropping litter and do the same in suburbs, parks, and countryside where it just accumulates.

How do we solve it? We need to teach environmental education in schools and try to stop littering habits before they form.

But also, I think a great application for robotics technology will be litter picking, street-cleaning robots!

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The bin removal was actually prompted by a period when the IRA would put bombs into bins in train stations etc., see eg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrington_bomb_attacks

So not a completely idiotic policy.

For a while there was a solution involving “hoop” bins with clear plastic bags so you could see what was inside them.

But recent terror attacks (which used knives and vehicles, not bins) prompted their removal again.

Wait, that doesn't make any sense. If the see-through bins solved a problem, why would they be removed when a different problem appears? They're independent problems, removing the bins when they're not involved in the new kind of attacks seems just random.

Yep, pretty much. I live not-in-London and during one of the heightened periods of security last year (armed police everywhere) all clear bag bins were removed from the metro and bus stations. This of course led to littering. It didn't make any sense.

I cant speak for London, but the bin clampdown was definitely post 11/7(there may have been a clamp down with the IRA that I'm too young to remember with a bin liberalisation in the 90s?). I also don't get the unattended luggage announcements. Because suicide bombers leave their bombs unattended? They should be searching everyone with bags /rant

The people who litter are the same ones who littered before the trash cans were removed. The only difference is that some of them were willing to walk a couple of steps to throw things away.

We need to teach common decency, adults need to set better examples, and the cops walking the street need to start ticketing people for littering - whether it's a fast food bag or a cigarette butt.

>The people who litter are the same ones who littered before the trash cans were removed. The only difference is that some of them were willing to walk a couple of steps to throw things away.

So, they're not the same, then? Those willing to walk a couple of steps to throw things away weren't littering before.

They were littering before, but not as frequently, as sometimes there was a bin nearby.

Or maybe instead of that we make it easy for people to not litter?

If something is easy, then you get into the habit of doing it without even thinking about it.

heh three years ago all metal trash bins in Shenzhen China were changed to plastic ones, for similar reasons i suppose. It's ironic to see the change in Europe, from cheap plastic bins to fancy stainless ones in city centers, back to plastic ones.

>In London, the “war on litter bins” (removal of litter bins from train stations and central areas, supposedly to prevent them being misused by terrorists)

That is not the dumbest idea I have ever heard of. But it's close.

You're missing that these bins _were_ used in IRA bombings in London, and it turns out that the flying shrapnel from a heavy exploding bin is quite dangerous.

Lighter-weight solutions were later introduced that limited the ability to place large objects in bins, or substituted large bins for clear plastic bags supported on a frame. These are still reasonably prevalent, though there could definitely stand to be more of them around London.

One can usually tell which countries have experienced terrorism, or at least pondered it, by the type and construction of trash receptacles. America has many tens of thousands of thick decorative stone, concrete and metal public trash receptacles vulnerable to bombings. When that happens, they will be gone, but rarely before.

Last time I was in Victoria Station in London, there was one alumin(i)um hoop with a clear trash bag, emptied constantly.

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