Stroll around your local town in the early hours of the daybreak and you’ll discover an army of sweeper trucks meandering around tidying up the mess strewn around by all the partying of the previous night. It’s a normal early daybreak scene, and it frequently covers the litter problem we face. We don’t often give litter a second thought as we feel keeping the streets tidy is not our chore.

Still, there is a sometimes imperceptible yet fundamental influence litter has in terms of determining the mood of people. People are more likely to believe a neighbourhood is lacking law and order if litter is scattered around, and therefore felons see litter as a possible sign for an opportunity of a break-in, a mugging, or car-theft. The very same sign instills some fear in other people who worry they might be walking into a more dangerous area and are concerned about possibly being attacked.

There’s also the impact on the visual attraction of a location. Litter lying around can give the visual aspect of a place looking unkempt even if it’s only been trashed by revellers from the night before. This can damage the reputation of a place if people are visiting the area for this particular short period of time and only find it in its littered state.

Prevention is always better than cure when it comes to litter. There’s absolutely no need to drop rubbish if there are unfilled rubbish bins around the location. If there is a lack of litter bins, or the bins that are there are overloaded, this is an issue to address the local council with. Throwing rubbish has a damaging impact on everybody.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Psychology Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.