- I always bring bags/gloves/grabber with me whenever I visit the local national park. The rubbish is particularly bad in popular picnic spots, like the areas around Audley^1. The NPWS staff do a great job of keeping the parks clean, but they can't get everything. You'd be shocked how quickly you can fill a garbage bag on a short walk. The most common items by far are disposable coffee cups and cigarette packets (with nearly 100% imported packaging). Just make sure you're careful about snakes in summer. I once put my hand within striking distance when picking up a chip packet! Some of them are so well camouflaged.
1: https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/things-to-do/cafes-and-...
by skyberrys
1 subcomments
- Littered across this website are countless gems and gotchas to make you think about the consequences of your purchases and actions. In particular the treasures he has found are quite surprising, 100 phones?! Just from looking for trash? The author is 47 I think and he's been doing stuff for 17 years. I have some of my own cool found trash collections too. The trash you find revels the personality of the place.
- Be sure to check the second page: https://www.sixstepstobetterhealth.com/money.html
If every person picked up a piece of litter a day, the world would be exceptionally cleaner quite quickly.
I make a point to pick up any I see; you can carry dog waste bags if you're scared to touch things.
by babycheetahbite
1 subcomments
- I purchased some "grabbers" and often go near the ponds in my neighborhood to pickup litter.
There are a lot of two liter bottles which are full or half full to be found, normally right near the shore. The first couple of times I found these, I foolishly emptied them (thought this was a good idea since they are so heavy) and along with whatever kind of liquid was inside, AA batteries came out. I vaguely have memories as a child of trying to create "explosives" by putting batteries in a bottle and throwing them (after shaking everything up of course). Not sure if that is what is going on here but if so, kids haven't changed much. I am sure that the kids that put these together later regret it (like around dinner time same day), but couldn't retrieve their device for fear that it might "blow", and so they just have to hope it is deactivated with time.
The item which to me is most baffling which I find in high volumes, is dental flossing sticks. These are commonly found everywhere around the ponds. I don't believe I have ever seen someone using a dental flossing stick in public. I have looked this up and I did find something suggesting that fisherman might use these as an all-purpose tool. Still not sure what this is all about.
- It only took him under one year to pick up the ONE MILLION cigarette butts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3gK-X32cy8
He started in 2020 and the video summary was made in 2021.
- David Sedaris has a similar hobby:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2014/jul/31/davi...
by sebmellen
1 subcomments
- Perhaps the coolest website I’ve seen this year. The amount of dedication is incredible. If you look at this cynically you will get nowhere, but if you realize something like this can inspire the next Boyan Slat, it’s fantastic.
- I picked up one of those Pepsi cans doing adopt-a-road once and I was impressed that an artifact from the 70s had remained undisturbed for that long.
by diacritical
2 subcomments
- https://www.sixstepstobetterhealth.com/covid.html
Why is the glove photo claiming censorship? Are the gloves arranged like letters or something? Am I missing a joke?
- I'm starting to suspect I might be cynical.
I was pretty impressed at the "1,000,000 cigarette butts that I removed from the environment" but I couldn't help but think "moved into what?" which brought this (https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM) to mind:
[Interviewer:] Into another environment….
[Senator Collins:] No, no, no. it’s been towed beyond the environment, it’s not in the environment
[Interviewer:] Yeah, but from one environment to another environment.
[Senator Collins:] No, it’s beyond the environment, it’s not in an environment. It has been towed beyond the environment.
[Interviewer:] Well, what’s out there?
[Senator Collins:] Nothing’s out there…
Also, I couldn't help but wonder if he was removing trash at a faster rate than it was being added. Picking up litter is a good thing certainly, but we really need to get people to stop creating it in the first place. Even properly disposed of all that trash is a massive problem, but I'd love to see more effort getting people to clean up after themselves. A very long time ago I'd see PSAs with owls imploring us to "Give a hoot" and fake indians crying. Was that helpful? Does that kind of thing even exist today? Now that nobody watches TV are they pushed at kids on tiktok?
by martin-adams
0 subcomment
- What incredible work. I found his video on all the smoking products he found really interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3gK-X32cy8
- I frequently walk 20 minutes from my house to a trailhead. Along the way, I often see annoying trash. Somehow, a freeway underpass (a road going underneath I-90) seems to be catnip to people who want to throw trash out of their cars.
Eventually I got fed up and picked up a few bags full of trash. Then I found another guy nearby who also likes picking up trash, so we had a few get-togethers where we collect 3 trash bags each. He has a connection with our city sanitation department, so they come and pick up the bags.
The same guy also runs a once-a-month litter pick up event where we meet at the post office and spend an hour picking up trash. He provides hi-viz vests, trash bags, and grabbers. Usually about 10 people show up.
Overall it puts me in a bad mood to see so much trash thrown out by shitty people.
- That Pepsi can is from the days before aluminum cans. And the pull tabs all separated completely. You would see thousands of those pull tabs everywhere you stopped your car, especially where you least wanted to see them, like in National Parks.
by assimpleaspossi
0 subcomment
- I pick up any coin I find. It adds up to a few dollars every year.
by roflchoppa
0 subcomment
- One of these puppies and some plastic bags to get trash when I take walks.
https://www.harborfreight.com/36-in-pickup-and-reach-tool-61...
- We do this in the summer when we visit the shores of Lake Michigan. The amount of washed up junk we find is shocking.
by antipollution
2 subcomments
- I hope he comes to India and starts a movement, ideally leading to a public holiday tradition where everyone is supposed to pick up 10 pieces of litter.
by m-a-turner
0 subcomment
- Is noone going to comment on the fact that the images are clearly AI generated?
- At ten seconds each, it would take seventy straight days to collect all those cigarettes... And he had store all this trash just to take a picture.
by OutOfHere
3 subcomments
- I don't understand why the local governments do such a poor job at cleaning litter. Do they not understand how bad it is? In NYC, the Bronx is utterly filthy.
- Use the right tool for the job.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKHLG1iOBUA
https://greenmachines.com/
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