Wander around your local town very early in the dawn and you’ll meet a number of street sweepers out and about cleaning up the rubbish strewn around by all the drunken activities of the previous night. It’s a common early morning time setting, and it frequently hides the litter trouble we encounter. We don’t actually give litter a second thought as we feel keeping the roads unlittered is not our job.

Still, there is a subtle yet substantial impact litter plays on human psychology. People are more likely to believe a neighbourhood is lacking law and order if litter is lying around, and so criminals see rubbish as a potential signal for a chance of a break-in, a mugging, or car-theft. The same sign produces some fearfulness in other people who worry they may be wandering into a more dangerous area and are concerned about possibly being robbed.

There’s also the influence on the aesthetic attraction of a location. Litter lying around can give the visual aspect of a location looking unkempt even if it’s just been trashed by party revellers from the previous night. This can damage the reputation of a place if people are only within the area for this particular time and only find it in its disorderly state.

There’s absolutely no purpose to drop rubbish if there are unfilled rubbish bins around the neighbourhood. If there are no bins, or the rubbish bins that are there are stuffed, this is an issue to take up with the local council. Trashing an area has a negative impact on everybody.