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Comment by EE84M3i | Hacker News Reader

In Tokyo, the primary cause of littering is surely that there simply aren't trash cans in public places (allegedly removed after the sarin gas attacks, but IIRC Tokyo metro removed the ones inside the fare gates a year ago to save ~1 million dollars a year)

Drunk people just leave trash in corners or near vending machines instead, if they can't be assed to carry it for the rest of the night until they get home.

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Having moved from Hamburg Germany to Shinjuku a few months ago I would like to add that I am still astonished by how clean the streets are here despite there not being trash bins except for the ones for cans and the ones inside of konbinis. Of course some people litter and if you go to Kabukicho or the along the street to Shin Okubo you’ll see more trash than let’s say in Nishi Shinjuku but given the density of these areas it’s still so surprisingly clean here. I also regularly see people (often elderly) pick up trash from the streets and put it into the trash bags just to clean the streets for everyone apparently. Maybe it is just the collectivist society showing here but I think this is rad!

I was in Korea several years back, and they had an innovation that anyone with working experience in fast food could appreciate: Built into the garbage cans at places like KFC was a hole to pour the remains of your soda into, so later on some kid didn't have to delicately move a garbage bag with two gallons of liquid in the bottom of it.

We can't have that in the US because it would take about 30 seconds for someone to plug the hole up with garbage.

Every self service soda machine has a drip tray connected to a drain. That’s where you’re supposed to pour the liquid (though clearly most people don’t know).

Please don't do that -- nobody wants to see you pour your backwash into the soda machine drip tray. That might be ok for overflow while pouring it, but not after you're done. Yuck!

Some European cities have solved that by replacing the rubbish bins with rings that hold a transparent rubbish bad so people can see if there is a bomb inside. I wonder why no city in Japan has adopted that approach.

I think there is a perverse logic behind removing trash cans: people who usually don't just throw their trash on the street will carry it with them until they find a way to dispose it properly (at home if they have to); people who are prone to littering will usually do it even if there are trash cans nearby. So I guess the percentage of people who will litter only if they don't find a trashcan is probably small enough so the savings from not having to empty as many trash cans outweigh the cost of cleaning up the additional litter (which has to be done anyway).

Having just spent a week there, I can confirm there is almost zero public trash cans. I found this really interesting and ended up carrying my trash a good bit, but quickly adapted. I also hardly saw any litter.

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