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Comment by burlesona | Hacker News Reader

As an American, one of the things that shocked me the most in visits to Europe was how much litter there is. I lived in Italy, and it was astonishing how there was just trash everywhere, even though Italy is a wealthy nation. I’ve traveled all over Western Europe and the only part that felt relatively “clean” to me was London - clean as in comparable to NYC or other major US urban centers in terms of litter level.

By comparison, I’ve lived and traveled all over the US, cities and rural areas, beaches, forests, etc. Litter is rare. Where you will find it are freeway underpasses, neglected urban or near-urban waterways and railways: places where people aren’t really “supposed” to go, and are therefore loitered in and rarely cleaned.

There are many areas where the US lags Europe, but in my experience when it comes to litter, we have far less of it.

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You must be going to different parts of Europe than I have. American cities (not suburbs, the actual cities) are absolutely filthy with trash and litter. European cities feel squeaky clean in comparison.

And what's with all that trash on freeways? I've seen a whole couch casually waiting to biodegrade by the side of the freeway. Discarded bumpers and tyres aren't even worth mentioning anymore there's so many everywhere. Large debris like that gets cleaned up immediately in Europe because it's a hazard.

Evidently making blanket statements about two geographically huge and economically / culturally heterogenous areas is misguided.

I had the same experience in Spain... we were doing some climbing around Costa Blanca and parked/walked along a few random stretches of highway and they are all covered in trash thrown from cars. That was really surprising, I had a stereotype of EU being more civic-minded/civilized than the USA, and there isn't much litter on US highways that I've seen in similar remote-ish areas.

I just don't even understand what process operates in a head of someone tossing an empty bottle out of a car... sometimes, I feel like I have trouble recognizing them as a fully-formed human, more like someone who needs house-training, like a dog.

Italy isn't that wealthy though. Wealthier people care more about a ton of things, like rates of automobile accidents and fatalities, the environment, etc.

Don't know what you're talking about. You can walk down any highway I've ever seen in America and pick up trash for miles and miles.

It's better than it used to be. The anti-littering "crying Indian" and "Give a Hoot" ad campaigns in the 1970s actually worked.

Perhaps things are trending the other way lately. I do seem to notice more litter now than I did when I was younger. But there are more people now also.

A huge part of modern litter isn't people throwing out, like it was in the 70s and 80s, but it blowing out of the back of vehicles, even trash trucks.

Another big issue I see around where I live is when storms hit on trash night. They'll pick it up around 6AM so people bring it out the night before, but on a regular basis we'll get a strong thunderstorm that blows trash everywhere.

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