Littering
Littering ( English littering ) refers to the contamination of surfaces and rooms by waste, usually as a result of careless discarding and lying omission of waste , preferably on public property, d. H. especially on streets and squares, in parks and in the open countryside. This is a criminally prosecutable offense and can be punished with a fine in Germany and even imprisonment in Switzerland .
Litter as a form of pollution must therefore be distinguished from the phenomenon of vandalism (willful destruction, damage).
Depending on what kind of garbage is left behind, this creates different types of problems, nuisances or dangers, e.g. B. hygienic , ecological and / or aesthetic impairments, impairment of the desired order, annoyance of the people living there (e.g. odor nuisance or danger of stepping into dog feces ) up to the risk of accidents (e.g. danger of slipping on a banana peel ) .
The occupation with the phenomenon of litter also takes place in different departments. It touches on issues of town and townscape maintenance , nature , landscape and environmental protection , ecology and the sustainable use of resources as well as issues of hygiene and communal health care.
Smaller items are usually thrown away. A Europe-wide study from 2003 came to the result that in cities, cigarette butts are the most common objects thrown away at 58.3%. In second place are plastics (11.6%), then organic waste (9.8%), paper and cardboard (8.8%), glass (7.3%), packaging (5.8%) and finally metal (3.9%). This study measured the extent by the number of objects thrown away. A Basel study from 2004, which recorded garbage according to several parameters (number, volume, weight, material), sees single-use packaging (beverage containers and fast food packaging) with a share of around 52% in the mountain of waste as the main problem.
Litter is not only found in public spaces, but also in private and personal areas. In apartments , at personal workplaces and on private, individually used gardens or land, there are forms of litter caused by users. They are often forms of messie syndrome ; H. the limited ability to part with things. Messie syndrome, however, also includes forms in which objects are compulsively collected and hoarded that are not garbage.
Littering, along with other types of pollution, neglect and lack of maintenance in public and private spaces, can lead to an extreme state that is often referred to as neglect .
Places of litter
Litter occurs in the city as well as in the landscape, but it is mainly noticeable as an urban and suburban phenomenon. While in the wild the plants overgrow and cover the garbage over time or it drifts as a garbage vortex in the sea and sinks below the surface, it remains visible in the cities. In Switzerland, almost two thirds of all municipalities see litter as a problem. Streets, squares and parks as well as public events are affected by the decrease in cleanliness.
Causes and Motives
The main cause of the increasing littering are often changed consumption habits ("flying meals" at the snack stand , material-intensive packaging, throwaway society ) and a generally more careless handling of public property due to changing conventions, social disintegration and / or lack of social control . Motivations for changed conventions can be comfort, habituation, desire for provocation or deviant behavior , etc. Conversely, psychologists and environmental educators also recognize “a kind of social criticism” in the litter, which is reinforced by group behavior:
“Littering is forbidden and therefore an easy way to cross borders. Throwing something on the ground is like a little provocation, a little test of courage. You feel like a hero: 'I rebel against society with this simple action.' Then there is the peer pressure. As a result, people also begin to suffer who otherwise never throw anything on the floor because they don't want to be seen as philistines. And the pressure to conform naturally continues in crowds. Where something is already on the floor, more is thrown in. If a limit is crossed, it quickly becomes unrestrained. "
consequences
The consequences of this behavior manifest themselves in municipal cleaning costs, in environmental pollution and also in sluming . Rubbish that has been left lying around for a long time leads many people to dump more rubbish in the same place, so that small piles of rubbish often turn into wild rubbish dumps in a short time .
Countermeasures
Against the throwing away of waste on public land, repeated awareness-raising campaigns and regular cleaning instead of one-off disposal actions as well as the provision of a larger selection of waste bins are carried out. A global initiative against litter is also taking place within the framework of an organization Clean Up the World supported by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) . The Plogging is an approach in which jogging and fall eliminate ( Swedish Plocka upp cancel ) are combined. The Rhine Cleanup Day was held for the first time on September 15, 2018 to free the banks of the Rhine from rubbish . In order to remove the litter in the winter sports areas , the Clean-Up Tour has existed in Switzerland since 2019.
See also
Web links
- German website about throwing away
- Littering on the website of the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment. Archived from the original on November 9, 2016 ; accessed on June 8, 2017 .
- Swiss website on the topic of throwing away (leads to a subpage of the Ernst Basler + Partner company)
- Austrian website on throwing away
swell
- ↑ Littering.ch: ARA study: cigarettes main problem of "littering" ( memento from September 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) , ( presentation ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. )
- ↑ Littering.ch: Basel study comes to the end: Fast food supports "garbage" ( Memento from July 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Daniela Gschweng: Environmental Education: "Littering is a kind of social criticism". Barbara Schumacher knows why we throw away rubbish. Daily week of August 13, 2015
- ↑ rhinecleanup.org
- ^ German press agency : "Rhine Cleanup Day": Thousands of helpers collect garbage on the Rhine In: aachener-nachrichten.de , September 16, 2018, accessed on September 16, 2018.
- ↑ CLEAN-UP TOUR 2019: The first national waste clean-up tour in the mountains. In: Umweltperspektiven.ch. May 1, 2019, accessed May 2, 2019 .
