I've seen filth all over the world ... but mostly Latin America, where I spent enough time to understand the cultural reasons of WHY there is SO MUCH trash and WHY no one seems to give a SH*T.

It's not just "trash" like plastic bottles, plastic bags, it's also filth from raw sewage, construction debris, car junk, anything. With Sewage (a serious one) it's that it has NO WHERE to go. In places, Civil Engineering is NOT their strong suit! So it goes downhill, to a river, the Ocean or in the street where you walking! We've all seen (and smelled this) many times I'm sure, and not just in Latin America.

I spent time at the MAIN dump just outside Mexico City. (a City of about 22 million) The scene there rates pretty high on my "dirtiest" place list. Hundreds of people ... including LOTS of young kids (think "SlumDog Millionaire") live there and make a living sorting through trash. Astounding scene.

I worked on a movie that filmed in that Dump for TWO DAYS and NIGHTS. The Dump is so huge, words cannot describe. It goes on and on for hundreds of hectares. After an hour there, you become "nose blind" to the smell. At night when you leave, you are covered in DIRT! Seeing the kids digging in the garbage and avoiding the cops and Bull Dozers was unbelievable.

The good news is many countries in Latin America have launched campaigns to counter random street littering. I saw littering as a kind of "Macho" thing, to just toss trash down like you don't care. But lately, less of this attitude. Ads against littering are mostly targeted at young people. It works. Also, lots more TRASH CANS ... everywhere! So, at least some positives here that I have seen, in person, over the last 30 years.

Also, if you talk to locals, they will tell you they have street sweeper people who's job it is to sweep up. (they do) They felt if they stopped littering, then the street cleaners might be OUT OF A JOB! Whatever!

Another stand out slum in Peru' are the MASSIVE slums along the Pan Am
just North of Lima. I don't know what this area is like NOW, but when I saw it many years ago ... it was nasty. THOUSANDS of unfinished houses, little to NO infrastructure, for sure no Sewage management. The scene was quite
astounding ... when 20 minutes South you're in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima.

In Germany, if you throw trash on the ground ... some old lady will come after you, and scold you! NIEN NIEN NIEN!!
Folks in "teutonic" northern countries are especially anal regards liter and garbage ...a bit over board sometimes?
Kids in the US are also well trained now to deal with trash ... and water bottles have become declasse here in
California. NOT A HIP THING at all. Re-usable bottles are The Way .. (for now).

But it is disheartening to see a beautiful landscape ruined by thousands of plastic bags trapped in a road side fence. This, even today, is still all too common. California is NOW in the process of BANNING all plastic bags. How long until the rest of the world follows?

The real travelers question could also be:
What is the dirtiest place you have eaten? (restaurant or public market)
and What is the dirtiest "hotel" or "Hostel" you have paid to stay in for the night?
I've got quite a few "good ones".

Next up? Public bathrooms (WC)!!!

The Kola peninsula and especially the town Nikel in north west Russia.

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From the stories here, I can't imagine my experience is as bad but I was very surprised at the amount of roadside rubbish in Kosovo. Stop to take a photo of the beautiful mountains and you're wading through plastic bags.

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Paul "Every county of England, every country of Europe and every (part of every inhabited) continent of the Earth" 94% done! What's left? Central America, East, Central and West Africa, Australia & New Zealand

Perhaps the manufacturers of all those plastic bottles and containers might launch a promotional campaign against littering and fund recycling efforts.

Maybe they do already, but the programs are ineffective, not big enough, corrupt, or all of the above.

If recycling centers were established and could be run profitably I am sure more people would collect and sell plastic to the recycle centers.

The question becomes, is recycling of plastic profitable? The folks that live and work in and around the large landfills (dumps) must be profiting somehow.

Anti littering campaigns and signs are beginning to appear along the Panamericana and on major highways throughout Mexico, Central and South America. Enforcement is not happening....

Hugh fines are threatened in the United States and Canada for littering with enforcement, and this seems to have some effect.

As an example, over landers reading here could send suggestions that might begin to solve the problem to corporate CEOs who bottle/wrap their products in plastic.

I imagine hugh steel coca cola bottle shaped and painted containers used to collect plastic . This would serve as product promotion and give corporations a greener image. The bottles could have trap door bottoms and could be lifted and opened over available dump trucks for transport to established recycle centers. What we need are creative ideas that would enable people to profit from participating in the recycle process.

For that matter the dump trucks could sport product advertising and be donated by the corporations selling products in plastic bottles/containers.

I don't really like the idea of a horizon featuring hugh coca cola bottle collecting points, but that might be better than seeing the raw windblown litter. I remember in Spain the signs shaped like big black bulls on hill tops along major highways - advertising something or other. One gets used to them.

Of course the challenges of living in some countries are so great that preventing litter is not high on the agenda. This sometimes is overlooked by people coming from countries with safety nets that provide adequate food, shelter and medical care for the chronically poor and unemployed.

What is needed are ideas that describe workable systems that make recycling profitable for the people, corporations and governments.

We have well traveled, creative people wandering the HUBB and have perspectives on this issue based upon successes observed worldwide.

Ideas? Let's not forget that the we have a State of Texas sized mass of litter, mostly plastic, floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean..... Whats up with that?

xfiltrate

Not true. These days you will even find plastic waste on some remote Islands without any people

Too many to mention unfortunately

May surprise people but Bali is a real dump, in Lovina I saw people just emptying trash bags into ditches and bushes.

Where can they take their trash?

Ancient history here in our own backyard, near as 1950-'70, in rural areas everyone had a trash pile. Usually some ditch, some dating back a few generations.
When these are found today we gleefully excavate them for treasures of the past.

Few years ago I worked on a bridge in Fairbanks. On one end was an old dump, I found old bottles, shoes, clothes, mule and horse shoes with ice cleats dating from early gold mining days. All treasures.

If there were not organized clean ups of the US highways constantly, there would be piles of trash everywhere. Some are done under armed guard.
I have been on I-10 in Tucson when it looked like the backstreets of Tijuana, where I am right now.

People here in TJ go out every day and sweep in front of their house, cleaning up the trash from the night before. In the early morning the homeless (a lot of deportees from the US) go through the trash looking for value, bottles, cans, etc.

Maybe when the vote comes up again for local container laws, some of our support could be used.

So I try not to judge the trash on the roads as I travel by my skewed standard.

Yep, the last few posts have expressed my own thoughts when I nominated Belgium.
Because the good folks of that country would say that they are part of the civilised world and yet they either allow their pooches to provide a health hazard for their children or they turn a blind eye to the act; in short, they have choices to make.

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Dave

You don´t want to visit the place of one of my many SIL´s ..... just saying.

I believe that Indians haven't worked out what rubbish is bio degradable quickly and what will be around for the next 50 to 100 years, 50 years ago you could through out the bag you got your food in (paper) and it was gone in a month, the same with cups - the old fashioned clay cups on the railways would degrade in quickly too.

Now with the introduction of plastic, and the same old habits it is creating a horrible ugly mess!

bet this is the same in South America too!

Still only a few billion people to teach not to litter :-/

+1 Kayjay, that's why I live in montana USA

This is just my personal opinion after traveling in poor areas where there isn't a garbage truck that comes around regularly;

Two words of advice if you don't like the way people treat their country, stay home. Save your criticisms of other countries for a more appropriate venue such as "cruises international of the rich and famous" .

I don't see criticisms here Bill as much as just observations with a bit of comment and color tossed in.

Sure, you can stay home ... I'd rather be out there learning ... and in some cases ... teaching or at the very least, helping with financial support through legit channels (very few).

This exchange of ideas ... and smiles may even promote world PEACE!
Who knows?

I heard this same story in Indonesia. People used to store their food on biodegradable things (like leafs etc). When you dropped that to the ground, it disappeared really fast. Now you can see only plastic.

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For me plastic is just too cheap. There should be some sort of "waste tax" included, so that people would think alternative options...

Plastic is good for some things, but bad for others...

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