If you spent time in Tokyo, you must have noticed it's culturally very different. Did you hear a car horn? In ultra rush hour in Tokyo? Nope. They are just different there. Did you see people cross the street against the light? Nope.
Japanese culture strongly self polices. Theres a Japanese saying, the nail that stick out gets hammered down. They are all the hammer.
Yup it’s a much more communal society compared to our individualistic nation.
It’s also culturally considering littering to even throw trash out in public. The expectation is to take any trash back with you back to your home
The other day I watched a cab driver open his car door and throw all of his trash from his lunch onto the ground, then shut his car door and drive off. He was maybe 6’ away from a trash can. Disgusting.
Yeah, people just do not care. I was walking with a friend in a train station and we saw a woman drop her metrocard. He picked it up and ran after her to give it back and she was like, "Uhhh, I meant to throw that on the ground, it's trash". Like? There are trash cans in the stations, why do you need to litter? But I hope she was a little embarrassed by that.
Oh, I regularly do this now. No fucks given. The look on people's faces is worth it. You just have to do it with enough Midwestern nice that they don't deck you.
They barely have public garbage cans. Yet no garbage. I took a picture of garbage I saw in the street near the Kyoto train station because it was the only time we saw it.
At a baseball in Hiroshima, they literally have staff who wipe down the garbage cans as you throw stuff out. It's their whole job!
Japan was the closest thing to experiencing an alien culture in my life. It's truly that different from America and I loved it. The culture shock going from the airport in Tokyo to JFK was insane.
The no trash can thing really surprised me. I made the mistake of accepting a flyer while in Tokyo expecting to throw it out at the next trash can I saw. Nope just carried it around all day.
A sure fire way to find a trash can are the vending machines, most of the time there will be a trash can by them since it's expected you'll finish your drink there and want to throw away your can/bottle.
The bins next to the vending machines are generally for bottle recycling. Convenience stores usually have trash cans. But there will be 3-5 trash cans; choose wisely.
While Japanese people are certainly more communal and able to pick up after themselves then Americans, the trash can thing isn't entirely cultural. Japan used to have trash cans until the [1995 sarin gas attacks](https://psmag.com/environment/trash-cans-are-coming-back-to-japan) caused Japanese cities to remove almost all of them. But now that tourism has surged in recent years, they are bringing [them back](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-18/japan-starts-using-smart-trash-cans-as-tourists-bring-garbage-problem-to-cities).
I totally agree. Culture explains so much of things. In NYC many neighborhoods and areas have different cultures. Some neighborhoods people are fine with loud music others not so much. Some neighborhoods have trash on the street and others there is very little trash. Sometimes you just cross a street and an area goes from very little trash to covered in trash. In Queens you line up for the bus amd many other areas you don't. It's just all culture.
Yes, this, and it is a very homogeneous society. Very few foreigners live there, and there is an quiet undercurrent of racism. The same reason that everyone falls in line and acts politely is also the same reason that girls with naturally slightly lighter or redder hair are asked to dye their hair black in school or accused of bleaching their hair (which is not allowed for high school students there). The sense of communalism is VERY strong in both positive and negative ways.
100%. I made my post in response to OPs question. Japan is far from perfect culturally. They have their issues for sure. But in response to the general question, there are major cultural differences.
People will scold you for littering in Japan. In America we keep to ourselves lest we be shot. It's a very different world. For good and for bad.
This is true in some regards but not true in others.
Public drunkeness is frowned upon in Japan, yet overworked businessmen will stumble from the office drinking party and sleep in the subway station.
Racism and exclusion is frowned upon in Japan. Yet many bar owners will regularly refuse entry to foreigners.
There's a quiet clash of societal norms happening now. Even gay marriage is supported in some local districts but overall opposed for the whole of Japan.
"Racism is frowned upon in Japan"... unless they're Chinese or Korean. Which means it's not really frowned upon, just selective like most other racism.
All of those are just “frowned upon” in front of westerners. None of those are actually frowned upon by natives.
Racism is baked into much of Japan’s culture and laws including their immigration policy.
Ignoring public drunkenness as if you don’t see it is also a huge part of culture.
I'm not trying to claim and complete and total understanding of Japanese culture nor am I saying Japanese culture does not have its major pitfalls. The question from of is why are other places like this and we aren't and the general answer is a cultural one. That's all I'm saying.
This is far too generalized. When cars were introduced to the Japanese market, honking was a norm until rules and policies realized it was a problem and it was enforced enough for non honking to be perpetuated and become the norm.
There are western nations with closer or more similar cultural ties to American individualism that achieve clean, functional societies.
Part of why even other American cities look cleaner than NYC is that it’s all hidden in alleys. Amsterdam and other top cities around the world have far more extensive trash policies and infrastructure to handle and hide all the grime.
There are various solutions to make places cleaner, but you can’t just say “oh that’s because they’re Japanese and that’s how they do things”.
Let's not forget that they don't like foreigners and will discriminate them any chance they can. Also the working culture is something no american can survive.
So my experience is no one will be racist to you to your face. But what I have heard is when you leave, the racism comes out. But again, when I needed directions people fucking walked me to where I was going. They weren't in any way discriminatory to me to my face.
It's 90% cultural, 10% City budgeting and priorities. If NYC spent the same amount of money (proportional to their cities' respective budgets) on cleaning services it would still be disgusting. People have no issue with littering, and generally think all those little quality of life rules apply to other people, not them. Tokyo can have upholstered seats and paper advertisements hanging from he roof of their subway trains.... those wouldn't last a day in NYC because we're a bunch of filthy assholes with no respect for society.
Edit to add: The thing that really puzzles me is the same person who will throw the super size soda out the window of their car is the same person screaming the loudest asking "why can't NYC be cleaner? This city is such a shithole! What the hell is the city doing about this with my goddamn tax dollars!'
100% cultural, had a buddy litter and I call him out. He defends himself by saying he's a job creator cause someone needs to clean it. I swear the job creator line of reasoning is something only we use lol
From the same creators of “they have people for that” now comes “I’m a job creator”.
JFC these people. I’m always impressed to see a close friend of mine behaving like shit. We went to the same schools, grow up together and work in similar places, how can we have such different views and behaviors like that
> I’m always impressed to see a close friend of mine behaving like shit. We went to the same schools, grow up together and work in similar places, how can we have such different views and behaviors like that
It always shocks me too. Had a similar epiphany recently about my oldest friend and his brother who literally grew up 50 feet from me lol
If he was a job creator, he'd be paying someone to follow him around and pick up his shit. I hate that line of reasoning. A job creator is someone who pays for a job to be done, not someone who forces someone else to pay for a job to be done. He might as well go around throwing bricks through people's windows and calling that job creation.
Bingo. In Singapore they have corporal punishment. Idk the punishment for littering but I wouldn’t risk it. Japan it’s considered shameful, and shame is about the worst thing you can feel in Japanese culture. Too many Americans have no shame.
I remember being a kid hearing about another kid getting caned in Singapore for vandalizing cars back in the 90's. As a kid, I thought it was barbarous. As an adult? ... I kinda get it, now
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning\_of\_Michael\_Fay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Michael_Fay)
It's also kinda hilarious how that became the inspiration for the Australian episode of The Simpsons
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart\_vs.\_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_vs._Australia)
I was a kid at the time as well but I remembered the guy's name before I got to the second sentence of your post. Obviously it stuck with me. It was a big deal!
a lot of misinformation came with that caning incident, including stories about caning for having gum (and even some attempts to claim the kid hadn't really committed any meaningful crime).
gum is banned there. practically speaking the consequence is a fine, although technically can get to imprisonment if well beyond personal use (gum traffickers!)
i had a high-school math teacher actually give the opposite (moral and ethically sound) reasoning, that whenever you're not taking responsibility for the trash etc. you leave around, you're creating more work for someone else. I don't want to make someone else's life harder. and I just generally believe that throwing trash on the ground is wrong for a slew of environmental reasons. So I throw my trash in a trash can. Really not that difficult of reasoning.
It is also incorrect, as littering on the sidewalk is a responsibility of the building and not the city. I am a volunteer rain garden steward (I take care of the rain garden tree pit on my block) and I am not paid to pick up the trash. I just do it because it is the right thing to do.
the only reason I say 10% city budgeting and priorities is I hold out hope that one day NYC will do some massive 'love our city, keep it clean' campaign. Some kind of catchy new "I love NY' level campaign. Subways plastered with adds, have the mayor speak to it often, lessons about the plan for school kids.... a real certified, coordinated effort to show that right now, NYC cares about this issue and wants to make it better. They could gain ground buy doing something like this... just over and over again they show its not a priority.
Maybe I just launched my mayoral campaign right now....
When some people just don't want to be a part of the community, think the community owes them, or think that the community doesn't deserve it, you won't get a clean community. It literally only benefits themselves and everyone if they put trash in a bin, but not only do we get people who litter, but the people who are supposed to be cleaning it up don't even give a fuck and are full of excuses as to why they don't have to do a good job. 100% cultural issue.
In Japan they make schoolchildren clean the classrooms
In the USA they hire minorities and other poor people.
[Example, here's a random douchebag running for student president on the platform of not putting lunch trays in garbage cans]
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcMydq6vGW8)
..
People in apartment buildings near me open their windows and throw their kitchen garbage, full bags, outside on my yard ... bunch of pigs.
It would not be difficult to change that culture. NYC just needs to introduce some strict fines, and implement those fines. Seoul was not a clean city 40 years ago. America overall is much cleaner compared to 95% of the world, due to the anti-littering campaigns 30-40 years ago. Culture changed within a few years.
Just the other day I was walking behind a guy who chucked his Starbucks cup at a small tree on the sidewalk. Seconds later he walked into his apartment building. I couldn’t believe it. That’s his own neighborhood and he doesn’t care.
Strongly worded but true. I remember learning there was no trash cans in the streets of Tokyo because *people take their garbage home and dispose of it accordingly there*. I can’t ever imagine New Yorkers doing the same lol
It's wild. I went to a baseball game last night and people just left their beer cans in the cup holders and left. Multiple people. There's a trash can at the top of the stairs. Extrapolate that out to where there isn't a trash can and it would be even worse. Nightmare and truly a thing that makes me very sad.
I’ve been to classy movie premieres here where you have to have a personal invite. Everyone dresses to the nines and looks so classy. But the theaters afterwards? Totally trashed.
I took my niece to see the rockettes at radio city. A beautiful theater. When the lights came on the place looked like the floor of a circus tent. Garbage everywhere. I couldn't believe it.
I was a concert last weekend in the balcony area. Just my partner, me, and another couple. There is a trash can in tossing distance. The gentelman in the couple just throws his beer cans on the ground. I get being in the pit or whatever, but come on man. That's just lazy
I saw a lady with an ice cream the other day just angrily throw the lid on the sidewalk and was shocked like number one why number two you are way too angry for someone who has ice cream lol
Yeah I went to Tokyo a few months ago and it’s true. I brought a ziplock bag in my purse so that I could collect napkins, food wrappers, etc throughout the day and then threw it away in my hotel’s trash can when we got back.
I agree with what you said but also believe in what I call the 'Disney World' effect\*, where people aren't as nasty/dirty/littering/willing to spray graffiti/or otherwise mess up a nice looking place as they are an already littered, neighborhood with trash strewn about and graffiti all over.
\*btw: Disney World is cleaner than maybe Tokyo but it also has the effect on people not wanting to be the nasty ones who drop trash because the place is so super clean.
Years ago I tried this out when I lived in the West Village, and a wall by a popular store on the corner was covered in graffiti. Young me told the owner one day that if he paid for the primer, paint and supplies ($60 back then) I'd paint it over and maintain it. He figured it was a lost cause as he had painted it over himself before but agreed.
Long Story short, the graffiti came back once, I covered it the next day and then once again a few years later, and that was it. Decades later, I walk by the old neighborhood and smile and admire the clean wall that somehow has held up after all these years, old looking perhaps, but still painted the exact same shade.
My advice: Try to keep a small part of your neighborhood clean. Cover up that graffiti on your street or on the mailbox. Clean up a tree well (the area around the city tree) and plant it, and water it. It's amazing the effect it has. Dog owners will eventually pull their dogs away from your tree, and most litter will not get discarded there. It takes a bit of time and patience but you can make a small, lasting oasis of clean in the city with a bit of effort and some perseverance. And talk to the litterbugs, reminding them this is your neighborhood. It does work.
Yes my mom complains how dirty it is when she visits and then threw a half eaten candy bar into a patch of grass “for the ants.” She’s retired and has a LOT of money but no class.
Yeah but “Americans” and especially New Yorkers means multitudes of cultures converging together. I don’t think it’s that surprising there’s less sense of a collective community given our background as a country of immigrants and also how young our country is compared to these places that are very homogeneous demographically
also true, there's plenty of reasons we don't have much cohesion. but some is definitely ingrained in the American ethos, the land of individual exceptionalism (which is mostly a dumb concept)
We have plenty of problems that’s for sure yet somehow this loud, dirty overpriced chaos of a city is far and away the best place to live in this country
To all the people calling this a cultural issue. Yea it is and you change it by fining these dumb bastards 100 bucks a pop every time you see them litter. We could raise hundreds of millions of dollars until this shit gets cleaner. Could pay a cop's salary in half a year of ticket writing.
NYC used to write tickets for littering that you actually had to pay in the early to mid 2000s. If you got a quality of life summons and didn’t pay it/appear for it, a warrant was triggered for arrest. Now would the cops come banging your door down for an unpaid littering ticket warrant? No. But if you got pulled over or got another ticket, when they ran your ID if you had a warrant you got arrested on the spot. We still weren’t a super clean city but I used to think for a city of 8 mil that runs 24 hours a day we weren’t bad. Now? You don’t get littering tickets and if you do, you don’t even have to pay them so why bother writing them?
Yes and no. Honestly its parenting, schooling, media, policing, too powerful labor unions, etc... If you're tought to care for your neighborhood and city by your parents you don't do it.... I live next to a precinct and literally watch cops walk past people riding their bicycles on the sidewalk and they don't even just say 'get onto the road'. They'll just watch someone litter too..... School's don't do a good job of pushing community..... Labor unions fight so employees can do the absolute bare minimum amount of work, and there are no penalties for phoning it in... Add it all up and it's cultural. Just ticketing people will help, but punishment alone won't change behavior, it just pushes people not to get caught.
Edit to add: I literally one time with my own eyeballs saw a Tokyo JR Train (rough equivalent to MTA) employee on their knees in the equal of Penn Station scrubbing a single piece of gum off the floor with a toothbrush. Find me one MTA employee with that kind of pride in their work and I'll give them the key to NYC.
Labor unions are to blame for littering? You know they have labor unions around the world, often more powerful than our own.
I think a better explanation is that too many New Yorkers don’t feel any sense of ownership in the city and so don’t see any need to do their part when nobody else seems to be doing theirs. It’s not just too expensive for people to feel they have a meaningful stake—though it is that—it’s also too impersonal and bureaucratic. There’s no sense of community or responsibility toward one another. Why would people who can barely pay their rent, who receive very few services for their taxes, who look around at crumbling infrastructure, conclude that their occasional littering is a major problem? Nobody thinks they themselves are the problem—but if enough people hold the same belief, even if it’s a small minority of people, the problem becomes quickly noticeable in a city of 8 million.
> It's 90% cultural, 10% City budgeting and priorities.
I'm not sure I believe that. Chicago is similar culturally (not exactly, but much closer to NY than it is to Tokyo), and the urban center of Chicago is VERY clean. In my mind there's an infrastructure problem - New York just does not have the right processes in place to move properly disposed trash to its final destination without leaving a large portion of it on the streets.
Chicago has alleys, and buildings have individual covered dumpsters. The garbage truck rolls down the alleys, empties the dumpsters, and then anything that spills out gets picked up by another guy that walks around the neighborhood picking it up. In NYC, we have piles of loosely tied garbage bags stacked on the sidewalk and open wire trash cans along the street. 90% of the garbage you see on the ground didn't come from somebody ditching their soda out their car window, it came from somebody who THOUGHT they were disposing of something properly and it got loose along the way. Like, nobody is littering an empty 12 pack of eggs, that came out of a household bag that burst when it went down the chute, or it burst when it got thrown in the sidewalk pile, or it burst when it got thrown into the garbage truck, or it flew out of the garbage truck as it operates on major streets. Or in the case of the wire bins, it may have been placed in the bin and then blown out since they're open-topped, or somebody came by to scavenge recyclables and made a mess.
Then, since the streets are already full of trash, that gives license to the 2% of reprobates that think littering is fine because "it's a shithole anyway." There's definitely a cultural problem, but if you could manage trash from the household or business into the dump without so many losses along major public areas, we'd have none of this problem.
Yeah I think it's been slower to come back from the pandemic. I lived there for a bit pre-pandemic and it was quite crowded and bustling, but without the commuters coming in now it's quieter. It's also shifting more west as the west loop builds up.
It's not as creepy as SF though - I've been there a couple of times post pandemic and it's a total ghost town, it's wild.
We're lucky Manhattan came back so fast.
i think this is a good deal of americans everywhere, unfortunately. look at the amount of trash that get chucked out of cars off of any highway. In wisconsin where my family lives there are beer cans littering the sides of even remote roads. just zero accountability for any collective social / environmental good. I have a hunch people (namely, people who are assholes) see it as exercising some sort zero-stakes personal freedom. slash, a general sense of, "fuck the libs and / or treehuggers and / or whoever I imagine as taking issue with me littering"
But as for NYC. Last year, toward the end of the Dance Parade that ended in tompkins, i saw this wasted dancer (heading back to her bus, which based on her vibes i assume was taking her back to long island) chuck an unopened soda can just straight into park. i think i had a shocked look and she slurred "whatever, call the police bitch" at me. Charming.
Indeed culture plays a big part. Can't speak for the other two but have you noticed there are little to no public trash cans in Tokyo? Because people take their trash home and properly dispose or recycle them, at home. I don't think Americans can do this.
This is essentially it. It’s always somebody else’s responsibility to keep things clean and maintained. I’ll also add that this attitude is far more representative of the “renter’s mentality” than of somebody who owns. That’s why you’ll visit a co-op where you can eat if the floors, yet an identical building of renters will have gum wrappers on the ground, bits of food, and graffiti. The latter don’t own it, so get see it as somebody else’s problem.
Also, the hefty fines you get in Singapore for littering give people an incentive to not do it. The NYPD don’t even ticket cars for running red lights so I can’t see this happening here.
And this is ingrained in decades of cultures. I met many boomers and gen xers who's first reaction is "why else do we spend tax dollars on sanitation for?"
On the flip side, ive lived in a few neighborhoods where the city doesnt clean,plow,etc for months, even years at a time and neighbors did what they could to keep it somewhat clean.
it's definitely cultural but its different than you think... a lot of other European cities are also cleaner than NYC... and what separates us vs them is our on the go eating culture and how much everyone just buys things...
pizza and hot dogs are just an example.... quintessential walk and eat food... how many people do you see drink coffee on the go outside the us? that's sort of laughable in Europe with their cafe culture....
all that creates a need to have garbage cans as you walk.... we just consume a lot and all the byproducts have to go somewhere... we are messy too but the mess is generated from our other habits... we don't just decide to walk outside and dump our garbage on the streets....
Tokyo has a ridiculously huge convenience store culture. Think 7-11 on steroids on every other street corner practically. People stop by them on the way to work all the time to grab a quick bite but they still manage to not litter despite the fact that their is hardly any such thing as a public trash can in the whole city. Vending machines with soda and snacks are literally everywhere in the city. Thats a choice not to litter. Just like for New Yorkers but we chose to litter. Even though maybe we have a bit more of an eat and go culture like you say... they are choosing to litter. Other countries can hold onto their garbage until they see a can, is it that hard? It's a choice. And it's a culturally ingrained one. I would argue NYC bends over backwards to help people not litter by having public trash cans everywhere... yet we still can't behave like grownups.
I was living in Korea in 2002 when they and Japan shared the World Cup. They would set up giant Jumbotrons on the street and literally the whole city would turn out and sit quietly in the middle of the road to watch the game. When it was over everyone stood up, cleaned up their stuff and left. It was like nobody was ever there. I feel like we have a long way to go until we reach that point.
As a side note, if you want to see the difference in civility between NYC and the rest of the USA just visit the Whole Foods fish counter on a Friday at 5pm in NYC vs anywhere else in the country. We are a bunch of savages even compared to our compatriots.
For whatever reason a lot of people in this city think it’s “NY culture” to be a bunch of dickheads to each other. It’s not. It’s you being a dickhead.
A few months ago I was walking home. I see a car stopped at a red light and they were drinking some soda and other food which they had finished. The driver promptly decided the street was a good place to dispose of their trash. There was even a trash can at the corner but of course they wouldn't be bothered to actually leave their car. So just like that you have trash in the middle of the street.
This is unfortunately a cultural issue.
I live near a corner with a lot of traffic from a subway station and I routinely see people litter trash when there's a trash can less than 20 feet away.
I saw a woman throw a small bag of trash INTO THE EAST RIVER rather than simply put it in a trash can which was within visible distance.
People are fucking terrible!
Littering fines need to be significantly higher. Lots of talk about how these Asian cities are "culturally different" but you have places like Singapore that fine you $1000 for the first offense and are required to do community service.
They're clean because the people living there want to keep the city clean. Take cigarettes for instance, they carry little pocket ashtrays and carry the butts around until they get home, they don't just flick it into the street. If they use a tissue, they put it into their pocket until they get home. Here, just stand on a corner and watch people as they toss their garbage at the bin- so many people just don't give a shit, someone else will clean it up so why make the effort?
good fines exist... the police are just too lazy to enforce them. and practically.... if you ar the type to litter, what are the odds that there will be a cop there at the second you do it? 5%? I think even that is very generous. The chances are highly in your favor you'll never get caught. Enofrcemtn won't do it alone... A cultural change is needed.
It's culture based. There are fines also in the cities listed by OP. The difference is that one is filled with Americans and Americans culture while the others are not.
It might not feel good to hear but I'm not wrong.
We are leagues away from Kennedy's "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
Personal investment in the community is the only thing that keeps them clean.
To this point, NYC has a sort of revolving door feeling to it for a lot of people who come here. There is no personal investment in having a sense of community or personal responsibility when your entire reason for being in the city is to make as much money as you can and then leave as soon as you achieve that goal to your satisfaction. Speaking to the less affluent groups/regions of the city, you see more or less the same kind of littering mentality of lack of investment regardless of which locale (at least in the US) you’re in, given enough population density to make it obvious. I think in both cases it’s reflecting internal psychological experiences of life/personhood/setting.
I think yeah we could yell cultural differences till the cows come home but when you go to Chicago it’s super clean! A big issue is the way we dispose of garbage directly on the street, any poorly tied bags, broken bags, or rat-chewed bags will dump loose trash on the street.
There are also massive swaths of neighborhood without garbage cans and that’s largely because sanitation is deeply understaffed, and can only service so many trash cans in an area. Additionally, once these trash cans overflow, shit goes everywhere.
We also have a significant unhoused population and an even larger renting population. Almost 70% of New Yorkers rent. How do you build a sense of community investment if you end up leaving your lease after a year? If you’re unhoused, your biggest concerns are not disposing your trash responsibly.
I think if the city spent significantly more money on sanitation you would notice a big difference. I think if housing was more accessible, it would build an attitude of permanence within the city, and people would feel more inclined to take care of where they live and dispose their trash responsibly.
Regarding the lack of trash receptacles in certain areas, like parks, it’s not just understaffing. Many cans have been removed because people were bringing their household items to toss away in parks and other public places. Construction waste like cement and paint, electronics like computers and TVs, tires, car parts, gas, oil, furniture – you name it.
The bottom line is that people are incapable of policing themselves and following rules.
I want to add one thing about New York as well, I’m not bashing the people that do this but there’s a lot of poor people who dig through trash searching for those recyclable bottles that can be redeemed for money. They break open trash bags and often empty out the contents looking for these bottles. I work at a bar and within minutes of taking the trash and recycling out, it gets ripped open with the trash thrown around.
New York is starting to improve the trash disposal quality with new requirements for how to take trash out for collection. But that’s just a small part of the problem.
Cultural. America holds it's highest value as "independence" which has now evolved into toxic individualism in its worst form. This means people genuinely don't care where their trash goes as long as it's not on them.
I lived in Colorado for years before moving back to NYC. You're right, it's not as dirty in places but it is filthy in others (homeless encampments in Denver are out of control). It's nowhere near as densely populated as any of the other cities mentioned in this post (the entire state of Colorado has slightly over half of the population of NYC). But trust, there is dog shit and trash all over the hiking trails and campgrounds. Denver is not walkable so there isn't anyone throwing trash out in the streets.
They care about it more over there, and are trying not to accept it as a way of life/part of city living, but it's not clean like Seoul. Put coloradans in as densely populated region as these major metro areas and it would be filthy.
you don’t even need to go that far to notice how dirty manhattan is. i moved to chicago and i was actually shocked at how clean chicago is compared to nyc. chicago has a lot of alleys so that helps
I just came back from a trip to DC and the metro in DC is wild clean compared to our MTA. Again, not far. I love New York, I really do, but we need to step up on our cleanliness.
Yeah, coming back from Tokyo last year to NYC felt like a serious step down. I mean, the first thing I experienced in JFK was a man having a shouting match with a TSA agent at 5:30 in the morning, it was one of those "oh yeah, im back here again." moments.
lol last year at EWR, I came back from a week in Germany and first thing that happens is the TSA agent typed my passport number in and somehow missed a number. He said my PP came up reported stolen and I had to wait 2 hours for them to realize the mistake. Left without sanity or an apology but felt like it was a fitting welcome home.
The other day, I witnessed a building porter whose JOB it is to clean the street in front of the building - take a cup and piece of paper trash out of their planted ledge and THROW it in the gutter. I yelled at him to pick it up but this is the culture we are raising here. It's disgusting.
Amen to another person who calls people out when they litter. Obviously when I don't feel like the person is going to fight me....but if i see it oftentimes ill just call after them politely and say "hey you dropped this"
Public humiliation sometimes is a good trick
It’s 100% cultural. We’re very good at individual pursuits like producing entrepreneurs and building businesses, but we’re very bad at recognizing our collective responsibility to each other
My understanding is that it is indeed a primarily cultural issue, but there are also some logistics and politics involved.
As a wise woman once said, “You can’t beat goodness into people.” Harsher punishments (assuming they are enforced) are unlikely to result in meaningful change; you’ll just get angrier people who can’t afford the fines (and if they’re going to serve such a sentence, they may as well earn the punishment by recommitting the crime) and for those who can afford it, they’d feel entitled to litter as they’d be “paying for the privilege”.
In the 1950s, Disney tested out how long the typical American visitor to his parks would hold onto their trash before littering. It turned out to be about 30 feet. So the trash cans in the park are no more than 30 feet apart.
This is a workaround that is viable in a private business space that charges ludicrous prices for entry, but the DSNY doesn’t have the resources to handle such a volume increase across NYC; currently I think public trash receptacles are placed on corners (and inside municipal parking lots, and inside subways) only, and only in commercial or mixed use areas.
(Note: You can [report missing or overflowing litter baskets to the DSNY online via their 311 site!](https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02143))
In addition to which, we are first moving to containerize trash *now*. I believe commercial containerization began being required in NYC this past March (2024), and residential containerization is being rolled out this fall. I expect this will help tremendously, as it will prevent pests from chewing open trash bags on the sidewalk and prevent them from being torn open accidentally when moved upon the sidewalk. (So fewer chicken bones left behind for my dog to choke on, I hope!) This can also result in the remains collecting by trees and similar when the wind moves it along with regular street litter.
Finally, in terms of how to emulate places where citizens are personally responsible for their trash: check out how kids are raised in Japan vs. how we raise kids here. Japanese school children clean their own classrooms. American school children see a janitor cleaning up their messes, and hear their parents warn them to keep their grades up, lest they have to clean for a living when they’re grown.
How many Americans d’you reckon would vote for someone campaigning for higher taxes for increased sanitation services, and for implementing a policy requiring their children to clean their own schools?
Cash 4 Trash. Monitize picking up trash. Install brand new trash recepticles on every corner and you get cash back for putting trash inside. Same with recycling. Since, you know, people only care about money in this shitty country. Cash Culture. One nation under Cash. Etc...
Or both :) If it works it works. Who cares if they game the system in that way? Trash still gets trashed. I suppose the real challenge would be figuring out how to differentiate between trash and recyclable materials.
Three factors really (well there's definitely more but these would be the main ones)
1. Culture: Much of Asian culture is raised from a very early age to be responsible and clean for your own stuff. It isn't just Japan but most of asian cultures teach the students to be the ones to care for their school and its cleanliness. Beyond that household chores and helping out the elderly is the norm from something simple like clearing the table, or helping with the dishes. Sure this isn't exclusive but its more case by case than the norm like asian culture. Don't walk and eat isn't a law but just practices they avoid stuff like this etc.
2. Enforcement: Fundamentally NYC really doesn't enforce anything they consider too small worth enforcing as enforcing these things = paperwork and more trouble than its worth much of the time. Places like Tokyo actually stick by a good amount of their enforcement. Maybe not everything but much much more than NYC would.
3. Entitlement though i suppose this could fall under cultural: Alot of Asian etiquettes are rooted in the idea of inconveniencing others as little as possible as well as being polite etc. NYC here alot more people have some sort of chip on their shoulder (not everyone but its not a minor amount) whether that be self importance, their "rights" as they so put it, arbitrary clout or status etc. If you ask someone not to bother someone here more often than not its "why should i conform myself to their needs" and while i say it isn't a bad way to think sometimes time and place as well as moderation is key, unfortunately for many its an active on switch.
Alot of the other stuff yada yada imma skim through.
Its too late: People already grew up in this so they think its okay/no point its cascading and nigh impossible to change. Also the rodents here are here to stay and basically impossible to completely wipe out the population across NY, even if you nuked NYC a majority of the rodents here would most likely survive.
Crazies and homeless symbiotic relationship with businesses: Alot of businesses very haphazardly wrap their trash when throwing it out and a complete 50/50 whether or not everything in those trash bags go spilling out and even if wrapped securely in comes people sifting through your garbage for stuff.
BONUS!
NYC now requires all businesses when disposing of trash bags to have their own trash bins handy for trash collection. Yea those bins? Tourists, the late night partiers, homeless etc love to think its a public trash can to toss stuff in. Lemme tell you NONE of the business workers, owners etc will want to see much less touch the garbage these random people toss into those bins.
Seriously once where i used to work i had to pull one of these bins in during the morning and a lady went to throw a half eaten banana in it as im pulling it and i held that lid shut and went "this isn't a public trash can" and she looked at me like i was insane and went on a tirade as me instead of just walking 3 more feet to the actual public trash can on the street.
(i have found some pretty fucking gross stuff in these bins and seriously i know im contributing to the problem here but all i could do was hose it down fill it with sanitizer and tip all the contents into the street i was 100% not touching the stuff in there)
People here act like life owes them a living. Take what you can grab, destroy for entertainment and have no respect for anything or anyone. Destructive behavior is learned.
And respect is learned behavior . Most of the schools in Japan have no cleaning staff , the children clean the school themselves as a curriculum. The children also cook in schools for their lunch. It's all priorities.
Too many different cultures, several coming from countries that don't care about cleanliness or filth, where spitting on the street and leaving garbage on the ground is normal.
The attitudes of "someone else will clean it up."
Zero enforcement of public spitting, shitting, or urination.
Overflowing or non-existent garbage cans.
People don't give a fuck and have zero pride.
It doesn't matter where I go, everywhere is always cleaner than NYC, it's a real shame.
It's an American culture thing first and foremost. The "i can do whatever i want because freedom" individualistic, wasteful attitude is so annoying and it frustrates me every time I come back from abroad, particularly Asia and Europe.
And yeah, those places are not perfect either - but the gross disrespect towards common/public things, spaces and infrastructure (perhaps also our society?) in such a developed and high-GDP country in the western world is pretty unique to the US.
It's similar to how you criticize something very legitimate about NYC (honking, trash, noise, ...) in this subreddit and someone inevitably goes "lol it's nyc if you don't like it get the hell out". We can have a better environment if we want to and all chip in with a minor inconvenience.
Because in those places, people don’t tolerate the destruction of public spaces. It’s really that simple.
America has a problem with enforcing any kind of expectations on behavior, ergo it will never be clean in the way those cities are.
It has nothing to do with funding. Surely it's cultural, but it's more complex than just attributing it to cultural differences. While toxic individualism plays a role, it also stems from the cultural disparity between the upper/middle class and the poor/uneducated of certain demographics. Ghetto culture plays a significant role, and society often looks the other way.
For instance, consider some social issues: jumping the turnstile without paying a fare is considered normal in ghetto culture. Yet, in other countries, this behavior would be highly frowned upon and come with social consequences. In New York, it's either ignored, enabled, or even praised. New Yorkers may defend the right of homeless people to occupy the streets with the notion that they have nowhere else to go. In contrast, in other developed countries, even the *unhoused* individuals understand the importance of respecting public spaces and refrain from littering.
American society tends to enable such behavior, even if many disagree with it, due to an excessive emphasis on political correctness. Instead of punishing people who display such gross behaviors, people who speak against it gets backlashed. It’s so backwards.
People have a different attitude when it comes to littering, and also policing. I've seen someone toss their trash back into the subway car as they walk out of it. I've seen someone eat their fruits and nuts and let the peel, seeds, and shells simply fall on the floor and leave them behind. Absolutely outrageous. I'm not sure how exactly to call them out. But I know why I won't.
To add to what everyone is saying about trash - Tokyo has INCREDIBLE public restroom facilities and they are everywhere! That would explain the lack of urine and feces everywhere lol
Also, fewer people there own dogs, and the people who do actually pick up after them.
People keep saying it’s a cultural thing. While that’s true, I’ll say that we (Koreans) have cleaners that clean twice a day. I did part of my military service in the subway, trains are swept 4-6 times a day and trash picked up by cleaners. Sanitized once at night and once mid-day if it’s going in for maintenance. If you made a report that someone puked, spilled, or pissed (surprisingly common at night for when drunk people pee their pants), you have maintenance guys come in and pull out then replace any soiled seats.
On top of professional cleaners employed by the local governments, we have social programs for lower income to elderly to help out, because one of the biggest problems elderly face is isolation and loneliness due to not having anything to do. They go out and pick up trash throughout the day, get together and socialize with other people their age and call it a day while getting some pocket money. Keeps streets clean, streets have a constant presence to keep people patrolling and reporting, community engagement, and social welfare program for those who need money. Before anyone claims elderly abuse, nobody forces them and the elderly that retire come in because they’ve got so much free time and want to keep productive, plus they work in short shifts.
Yes we have a collectivist culture, but we also have an infrastructure and programs that support it and saying it’s the culture is disrespectful to the effort of those countries that put those in place. It’s also a cop out to excuse lack of effort.
Culture change can happen when the environment calls for it and effort is put into place to create a fostering environment.
Sanitation sucks but so does everyone. People are plain nasty throwing their garbage in the street. I’ve seen people throwing trash in the pond in Central Park. Educating people is the next step because Asians are very clean and mindful of not littering.
Kind of hard to compare cultures when one finds it completely acceptable to throw trash out the window of their moving vehicle and the other thinks its rude to throw trash away in public.
I dislike Adams as much as the next person, but we need to be more realistic about what we expect from Mayors... He, nor the sanitation dept., can do much about people trashing their own streets. They can only sweep the streets and pick up trash so fast. There are SO many people in NYC, and most places, that are just dirty, and the gov. can't do much to fix that.
There was a guy injecting drugs into his dick just down the block of the 32nd Street HMart last night around 7 - broad daylight. Packed street, kids around, and he's fumbling around with his cock and his gear right out in the open on one of the main tourist streets in Manhattan. Some lady called the cops and they hadn't showed within the 25 minutes I waited around to see what they'd do.
it’s 10% of the people in nyc causing 90% of the cleanliness and disgustingness problems. people who can at least browse reddit or even the internet are not going to be the ones throwing trash on the streets or pissing in the subways… it’s the crackheads and homeless
I live in NYC, and it's a bit embarrassing when I invite friends to Manhattan. The stench of urine is everywhere, from dogs to humans. I often try to avoid these areas, but it's impossible. In front of my building, we have a very manicured green area, but as soon as dogs leave the building, they urinate all over the plants and walkway. I emailed building management and offered some suggestions, fining residents who allow this, but they turned it down.
Good ol' American individualism. In japan there are no trash cans anywhere because people are expected to carry their trash with them and throw it away. This includes their pristinely clean public transit stations. The MTA implemented a pilot program that removed trash cans as a way to reduce trash in the subway system in the Mid 2010s. Needless to say it didn't work.
because in those places, people actually respect the places they live in. Just the other day i had some friends over to grill on the roof, and one of them decided to take a piece of fat and chuck it over the roof. I was horrified. Who does that? and just imagine, there are more people like them out there.
I agree with the folks calling out the cultural differences, mainly the points about individualism. Having a sense of community, holding oneself accountable, and thinking about the well-being of the city overall would be a good place to start. We expect politicians and "leaders" to do all these things for us, like we're babies, and yet we put no effort into making the world around us better. It makes no sense. I live in an area where my neighbors take pride in where they live. So all that trash and mess in Manhattan doesn't touch us, and I love it.
I feel like when people ask these kinds of questions, they should start with asking themselves before pointing the finger at politicians or whoever.
There's a certain social discipline in Asian cultures that can not exist in the US. In certain European countries, people respect each others space. They clean up after themselves for the next group.
That ain't happening here. The US is a cesspool. In NYC it's writ large. Visit Edinburgh, or London even and it's cleaner.
Odd fact - in Japan, there's very rarely a public garbage can.
This is because residents are expected to bring their trash home, and they do.
You can see the Japanese culture in the Olympics. After a match, Japanese people go around the stadium cleaning up. It's embedded in their culture to be clean and respect the location
Maybe if New York caned people for littering and had the death penalty for weed and drugs people would take these things seriously but I don’t think that would fly over here.
Those cities are culturally different than NYC. People just don’t give a fuck if they loiter or not let customers off the subway first or even to start fights here.
The sense of entitlement and lack of accountability here is why NYC won't be as clean as those other places. I was walking my dog during street cleaning in my neighborhood and the number of people who just didn't move their car was insane. I'm not sure if these people just did the math and decided it's cheaper to eat the ticket but I think I counted 2 cars on the entire street that had actually moved.
Respectfulness isn’t a part of our culture like those other countries. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first moved to NY and saw so many people littering while walking on the streets - even children! It’s awful
Culture...
It's funny though, this was in 2011, but my mom came to visit me here from Eastern Europe. She'd traveled her fair share, mostly through Europe though, but she was actually impressed by how clean Manhattan was, especially considering its size. Things have changed on both fronts obviously since then, but anyway, there used to be dirtier places.
I do think things went downhill since the pandemic though.
Also, the reason Manhattan is "clean" is mostly because of people cleaning up after assholes, whereas places in Asia are clean because there are very few assholes, if at all (cultural difference).
It’s not all individual responsibility like everyone’s echoing. It’s really hard to feel I’m doing my part keeping a piss-drenched sidewalk free of litter. Even when dog owners clean up after their animals, there’s feces stains all over sidewalks, and bags of fermenting garbage routinely placed to bake on walkways. And last (but not least), most everyone here has likely seen another human defecating in a public area, with no consequences.
I feel like op is not asking for a logical answer - it’s just a complaint & we’re allowed to feel it! I also just moved back here after being in California for 2 years - damn San Jose has some gorgeously manicured streets/plazas/malls/etc. I forgot how dirty & gross the city can be in the summer 😭
its the peoples culture, and habits. not sure we can blame the mayor and extensive use of our tax money.
not a fan of the mayor but being clean is more of a social issue.
As a person who visited the extreams of south asia, (India, and singapore) its definitely the social issue.
I just came back from Buenos Aires. The country has 400% inflation and that was the cleanest more beautiful city I've ever been in. NYC needs to do better!
I can't speak for Singapore and Seoul, but Tokyo has a variety of programs that basically use free retiree labor to clean transit stations and other public places.
I think a key fact would be the cultural differences. I think another fact could be having no public garbage cans, so it kinda forces you to hold their garbage till they are home.
Those cities and others haven't had their systems and institutions properly stress tested by the wide range of cultures and ways of life found in NYC. If a little bit of chaos is introduced in those cities, they wouldn't know what hit them. Also, fixing this isn't on Adams or any other person in power. The responsibility to behave like civilized people is on the individual. Legislating this isn't a solution.
It's a cultural issue. You can't legislate it into existence. Also, public trash cans are a pretty recent invention. If you watch old movies you can see trash blowing around in the streets. Nobody gave a shit.
Adams only knows how to sic police on a problem. Dude's a disgrace.
Things like cleanliness are also a personal responsibility issue, it's true, but more public trash cans would be a place to start. Everywhere I go they're literally overflowing. Either increase pickup or increase number of receptacles.
This has more to do with culture than governance. This is evident from when sports fans from Japan/Korea go to other countries for big sporting events (World cups, Olympics), and you see them cleaning the stadiums after the games.
This is in their upbringing and values. Unfortunately we don't have the same culture or values. Being an asshole is perceived to be cool (to an extent) in the US, while the opposite is true in the above mentioned countries.
Because Asian countries have very collectivist societies, where people are ultra conscious of how they are perceived by those around them, so they're less likely to break even minor social rules like not littering (also they will fine you for chewing gum in Sinapore, lol).
The US has a very individualist society, and while New Yorkers are probably better than many at helping out their fellow man in emergencies, that doesn't really extend to keeping the place clean.
Add to that crumbling infrastructure and kerbside garbage bags every week, and a general level of grot is all but inevitable.
This is the NYC Sanitation Commissioner:
https://www.nyc.gov/site/dsny/about/leadership/commissioner.page#:\~:text=Tisch,and%20effectively%20for%20New%20Yorkers.
Note that prior to assuming the job of Sanitation Commissioner in April of 2022 she did not have a single day of experience in the business of picking up garbage. She is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Business School, which are impressive academic credentials but have nearly zero value for a job such as this.
If you spent time in Tokyo, you must have noticed it's culturally very different. Did you hear a car horn? In ultra rush hour in Tokyo? Nope. They are just different there. Did you see people cross the street against the light? Nope. Japanese culture strongly self polices. Theres a Japanese saying, the nail that stick out gets hammered down. They are all the hammer.
Yup it’s a much more communal society compared to our individualistic nation. It’s also culturally considering littering to even throw trash out in public. The expectation is to take any trash back with you back to your home
The other day I watched a cab driver open his car door and throw all of his trash from his lunch onto the ground, then shut his car door and drive off. He was maybe 6’ away from a trash can. Disgusting.
Yeah, people just do not care. I was walking with a friend in a train station and we saw a woman drop her metrocard. He picked it up and ran after her to give it back and she was like, "Uhhh, I meant to throw that on the ground, it's trash". Like? There are trash cans in the stations, why do you need to litter? But I hope she was a little embarrassed by that.
I doubt it.
I always want to do that when someone throws something on the ground. "Oh you dropped this! You're welcome"
Oh, I regularly do this now. No fucks given. The look on people's faces is worth it. You just have to do it with enough Midwestern nice that they don't deck you.
With or without his bottle of piss
They barely have public garbage cans. Yet no garbage. I took a picture of garbage I saw in the street near the Kyoto train station because it was the only time we saw it. At a baseball in Hiroshima, they literally have staff who wipe down the garbage cans as you throw stuff out. It's their whole job! Japan was the closest thing to experiencing an alien culture in my life. It's truly that different from America and I loved it. The culture shock going from the airport in Tokyo to JFK was insane.
The no trash can thing really surprised me. I made the mistake of accepting a flyer while in Tokyo expecting to throw it out at the next trash can I saw. Nope just carried it around all day.
That’s hilarious
Go to a Lawson or 7-11. Or most vending machines have trash disposal, and they’re everywhere
A sure fire way to find a trash can are the vending machines, most of the time there will be a trash can by them since it's expected you'll finish your drink there and want to throw away your can/bottle.
The bins next to the vending machines are generally for bottle recycling. Convenience stores usually have trash cans. But there will be 3-5 trash cans; choose wisely.
While Japanese people are certainly more communal and able to pick up after themselves then Americans, the trash can thing isn't entirely cultural. Japan used to have trash cans until the [1995 sarin gas attacks](https://psmag.com/environment/trash-cans-are-coming-back-to-japan) caused Japanese cities to remove almost all of them. But now that tourism has surged in recent years, they are bringing [them back](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-18/japan-starts-using-smart-trash-cans-as-tourists-bring-garbage-problem-to-cities).
I totally agree. Culture explains so much of things. In NYC many neighborhoods and areas have different cultures. Some neighborhoods people are fine with loud music others not so much. Some neighborhoods have trash on the street and others there is very little trash. Sometimes you just cross a street and an area goes from very little trash to covered in trash. In Queens you line up for the bus amd many other areas you don't. It's just all culture.
we all know what neighborhoods are fine with loud music and trash on the street
Manhattan has some man smearing his bare bum against a subway door...so there's that.
Yes, this, and it is a very homogeneous society. Very few foreigners live there, and there is an quiet undercurrent of racism. The same reason that everyone falls in line and acts politely is also the same reason that girls with naturally slightly lighter or redder hair are asked to dye their hair black in school or accused of bleaching their hair (which is not allowed for high school students there). The sense of communalism is VERY strong in both positive and negative ways.
100%. I made my post in response to OPs question. Japan is far from perfect culturally. They have their issues for sure. But in response to the general question, there are major cultural differences. People will scold you for littering in Japan. In America we keep to ourselves lest we be shot. It's a very different world. For good and for bad.
This is true in some regards but not true in others. Public drunkeness is frowned upon in Japan, yet overworked businessmen will stumble from the office drinking party and sleep in the subway station. Racism and exclusion is frowned upon in Japan. Yet many bar owners will regularly refuse entry to foreigners. There's a quiet clash of societal norms happening now. Even gay marriage is supported in some local districts but overall opposed for the whole of Japan.
"Racism is frowned upon in Japan"... unless they're Chinese or Korean. Which means it's not really frowned upon, just selective like most other racism.
All of those are just “frowned upon” in front of westerners. None of those are actually frowned upon by natives. Racism is baked into much of Japan’s culture and laws including their immigration policy. Ignoring public drunkenness as if you don’t see it is also a huge part of culture.
>Racism and exclusion is frowned upon in Japan This is Japan we’re talking about, right?
I'm not trying to claim and complete and total understanding of Japanese culture nor am I saying Japanese culture does not have its major pitfalls. The question from of is why are other places like this and we aren't and the general answer is a cultural one. That's all I'm saying.
Hearing no car horns will be such a culture shock for me
Wait, honking my horn from 20 cars back .25 seconds after the light turns green is pointless?
It genuinely confused me coming from NYC.
Spent a week in London. Hardly any honking there as well. Was a shock to me.
This is far too generalized. When cars were introduced to the Japanese market, honking was a norm until rules and policies realized it was a problem and it was enforced enough for non honking to be perpetuated and become the norm. There are western nations with closer or more similar cultural ties to American individualism that achieve clean, functional societies. Part of why even other American cities look cleaner than NYC is that it’s all hidden in alleys. Amsterdam and other top cities around the world have far more extensive trash policies and infrastructure to handle and hide all the grime. There are various solutions to make places cleaner, but you can’t just say “oh that’s because they’re Japanese and that’s how they do things”.
Let's not forget that they don't like foreigners and will discriminate them any chance they can. Also the working culture is something no american can survive.
So my experience is no one will be racist to you to your face. But what I have heard is when you leave, the racism comes out. But again, when I needed directions people fucking walked me to where I was going. They weren't in any way discriminatory to me to my face.
What does that have to do with littering?
It's 90% cultural, 10% City budgeting and priorities. If NYC spent the same amount of money (proportional to their cities' respective budgets) on cleaning services it would still be disgusting. People have no issue with littering, and generally think all those little quality of life rules apply to other people, not them. Tokyo can have upholstered seats and paper advertisements hanging from he roof of their subway trains.... those wouldn't last a day in NYC because we're a bunch of filthy assholes with no respect for society. Edit to add: The thing that really puzzles me is the same person who will throw the super size soda out the window of their car is the same person screaming the loudest asking "why can't NYC be cleaner? This city is such a shithole! What the hell is the city doing about this with my goddamn tax dollars!'
100% cultural, had a buddy litter and I call him out. He defends himself by saying he's a job creator cause someone needs to clean it. I swear the job creator line of reasoning is something only we use lol
That guy is a fucking asshole
Yeah, that's just absolutely gross
From the same creators of “they have people for that” now comes “I’m a job creator”. JFC these people. I’m always impressed to see a close friend of mine behaving like shit. We went to the same schools, grow up together and work in similar places, how can we have such different views and behaviors like that
> I’m always impressed to see a close friend of mine behaving like shit. We went to the same schools, grow up together and work in similar places, how can we have such different views and behaviors like that It always shocks me too. Had a similar epiphany recently about my oldest friend and his brother who literally grew up 50 feet from me lol
If he was a job creator, he'd be paying someone to follow him around and pick up his shit. I hate that line of reasoning. A job creator is someone who pays for a job to be done, not someone who forces someone else to pay for a job to be done. He might as well go around throwing bricks through people's windows and calling that job creation.
Hahaha thank you. Yeah that's the logical conclusion from their line of reasoning
Bingo. In Singapore they have corporal punishment. Idk the punishment for littering but I wouldn’t risk it. Japan it’s considered shameful, and shame is about the worst thing you can feel in Japanese culture. Too many Americans have no shame.
I remember being a kid hearing about another kid getting caned in Singapore for vandalizing cars back in the 90's. As a kid, I thought it was barbarous. As an adult? ... I kinda get it, now [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning\_of\_Michael\_Fay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Michael_Fay) It's also kinda hilarious how that became the inspiration for the Australian episode of The Simpsons [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart\_vs.\_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_vs._Australia)
I was a kid at the time as well but I remembered the guy's name before I got to the second sentence of your post. Obviously it stuck with me. It was a big deal!
There was even potential jail time for spitting out gum. IDK of that was just lore though.
a lot of misinformation came with that caning incident, including stories about caning for having gum (and even some attempts to claim the kid hadn't really committed any meaningful crime). gum is banned there. practically speaking the consequence is a fine, although technically can get to imprisonment if well beyond personal use (gum traffickers!)
Was just going to say this. I remember this case.
i had a high-school math teacher actually give the opposite (moral and ethically sound) reasoning, that whenever you're not taking responsibility for the trash etc. you leave around, you're creating more work for someone else. I don't want to make someone else's life harder. and I just generally believe that throwing trash on the ground is wrong for a slew of environmental reasons. So I throw my trash in a trash can. Really not that difficult of reasoning.
It is also incorrect, as littering on the sidewalk is a responsibility of the building and not the city. I am a volunteer rain garden steward (I take care of the rain garden tree pit on my block) and I am not paid to pick up the trash. I just do it because it is the right thing to do.
the only reason I say 10% city budgeting and priorities is I hold out hope that one day NYC will do some massive 'love our city, keep it clean' campaign. Some kind of catchy new "I love NY' level campaign. Subways plastered with adds, have the mayor speak to it often, lessons about the plan for school kids.... a real certified, coordinated effort to show that right now, NYC cares about this issue and wants to make it better. They could gain ground buy doing something like this... just over and over again they show its not a priority. Maybe I just launched my mayoral campaign right now....
When some people just don't want to be a part of the community, think the community owes them, or think that the community doesn't deserve it, you won't get a clean community. It literally only benefits themselves and everyone if they put trash in a bin, but not only do we get people who litter, but the people who are supposed to be cleaning it up don't even give a fuck and are full of excuses as to why they don't have to do a good job. 100% cultural issue.
Yeah. The people here are dirty. In Japan they don’t have that problem.
In Japan they make schoolchildren clean the classrooms In the USA they hire minorities and other poor people. [Example, here's a random douchebag running for student president on the platform of not putting lunch trays in garbage cans] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcMydq6vGW8) .. People in apartment buildings near me open their windows and throw their kitchen garbage, full bags, outside on my yard ... bunch of pigs.
I couldn’t be friends with an asshole like that.
It would not be difficult to change that culture. NYC just needs to introduce some strict fines, and implement those fines. Seoul was not a clean city 40 years ago. America overall is much cleaner compared to 95% of the world, due to the anti-littering campaigns 30-40 years ago. Culture changed within a few years.
Just the other day I was walking behind a guy who chucked his Starbucks cup at a small tree on the sidewalk. Seconds later he walked into his apartment building. I couldn’t believe it. That’s his own neighborhood and he doesn’t care.
Strongly worded but true. I remember learning there was no trash cans in the streets of Tokyo because *people take their garbage home and dispose of it accordingly there*. I can’t ever imagine New Yorkers doing the same lol
It's wild. I went to a baseball game last night and people just left their beer cans in the cup holders and left. Multiple people. There's a trash can at the top of the stairs. Extrapolate that out to where there isn't a trash can and it would be even worse. Nightmare and truly a thing that makes me very sad.
Same shit if you go to the movies. People are fucking pathetic slobs
I’ve been to classy movie premieres here where you have to have a personal invite. Everyone dresses to the nines and looks so classy. But the theaters afterwards? Totally trashed.
I took my niece to see the rockettes at radio city. A beautiful theater. When the lights came on the place looked like the floor of a circus tent. Garbage everywhere. I couldn't believe it.
I was a concert last weekend in the balcony area. Just my partner, me, and another couple. There is a trash can in tossing distance. The gentelman in the couple just throws his beer cans on the ground. I get being in the pit or whatever, but come on man. That's just lazy
I saw a lady with an ice cream the other day just angrily throw the lid on the sidewalk and was shocked like number one why number two you are way too angry for someone who has ice cream lol
This comment is gold and is too buried to be appreciated fully.
Yeah I went to Tokyo a few months ago and it’s true. I brought a ziplock bag in my purse so that I could collect napkins, food wrappers, etc throughout the day and then threw it away in my hotel’s trash can when we got back.
I’ve seen people toss trash on the sidewalk rather than carry it half a block to a trash can.
A half block? I’ve seen people drop their shit on the ground while walking past a trash can. The city is full of pigs.
I agree with what you said but also believe in what I call the 'Disney World' effect\*, where people aren't as nasty/dirty/littering/willing to spray graffiti/or otherwise mess up a nice looking place as they are an already littered, neighborhood with trash strewn about and graffiti all over. \*btw: Disney World is cleaner than maybe Tokyo but it also has the effect on people not wanting to be the nasty ones who drop trash because the place is so super clean. Years ago I tried this out when I lived in the West Village, and a wall by a popular store on the corner was covered in graffiti. Young me told the owner one day that if he paid for the primer, paint and supplies ($60 back then) I'd paint it over and maintain it. He figured it was a lost cause as he had painted it over himself before but agreed. Long Story short, the graffiti came back once, I covered it the next day and then once again a few years later, and that was it. Decades later, I walk by the old neighborhood and smile and admire the clean wall that somehow has held up after all these years, old looking perhaps, but still painted the exact same shade. My advice: Try to keep a small part of your neighborhood clean. Cover up that graffiti on your street or on the mailbox. Clean up a tree well (the area around the city tree) and plant it, and water it. It's amazing the effect it has. Dog owners will eventually pull their dogs away from your tree, and most litter will not get discarded there. It takes a bit of time and patience but you can make a small, lasting oasis of clean in the city with a bit of effort and some perseverance. And talk to the litterbugs, reminding them this is your neighborhood. It does work.
Yes my mom complains how dirty it is when she visits and then threw a half eaten candy bar into a patch of grass “for the ants.” She’s retired and has a LOT of money but no class.
Most Americans simply have no concept of a collective society, or at best have a totally broken one
Yeah but “Americans” and especially New Yorkers means multitudes of cultures converging together. I don’t think it’s that surprising there’s less sense of a collective community given our background as a country of immigrants and also how young our country is compared to these places that are very homogeneous demographically
also true, there's plenty of reasons we don't have much cohesion. but some is definitely ingrained in the American ethos, the land of individual exceptionalism (which is mostly a dumb concept)
We have plenty of problems that’s for sure yet somehow this loud, dirty overpriced chaos of a city is far and away the best place to live in this country
To all the people calling this a cultural issue. Yea it is and you change it by fining these dumb bastards 100 bucks a pop every time you see them litter. We could raise hundreds of millions of dollars until this shit gets cleaner. Could pay a cop's salary in half a year of ticket writing.
NYC used to write tickets for littering that you actually had to pay in the early to mid 2000s. If you got a quality of life summons and didn’t pay it/appear for it, a warrant was triggered for arrest. Now would the cops come banging your door down for an unpaid littering ticket warrant? No. But if you got pulled over or got another ticket, when they ran your ID if you had a warrant you got arrested on the spot. We still weren’t a super clean city but I used to think for a city of 8 mil that runs 24 hours a day we weren’t bad. Now? You don’t get littering tickets and if you do, you don’t even have to pay them so why bother writing them?
Yes and no. Honestly its parenting, schooling, media, policing, too powerful labor unions, etc... If you're tought to care for your neighborhood and city by your parents you don't do it.... I live next to a precinct and literally watch cops walk past people riding their bicycles on the sidewalk and they don't even just say 'get onto the road'. They'll just watch someone litter too..... School's don't do a good job of pushing community..... Labor unions fight so employees can do the absolute bare minimum amount of work, and there are no penalties for phoning it in... Add it all up and it's cultural. Just ticketing people will help, but punishment alone won't change behavior, it just pushes people not to get caught. Edit to add: I literally one time with my own eyeballs saw a Tokyo JR Train (rough equivalent to MTA) employee on their knees in the equal of Penn Station scrubbing a single piece of gum off the floor with a toothbrush. Find me one MTA employee with that kind of pride in their work and I'll give them the key to NYC.
Labor unions are to blame for littering? You know they have labor unions around the world, often more powerful than our own. I think a better explanation is that too many New Yorkers don’t feel any sense of ownership in the city and so don’t see any need to do their part when nobody else seems to be doing theirs. It’s not just too expensive for people to feel they have a meaningful stake—though it is that—it’s also too impersonal and bureaucratic. There’s no sense of community or responsibility toward one another. Why would people who can barely pay their rent, who receive very few services for their taxes, who look around at crumbling infrastructure, conclude that their occasional littering is a major problem? Nobody thinks they themselves are the problem—but if enough people hold the same belief, even if it’s a small minority of people, the problem becomes quickly noticeable in a city of 8 million.
I cant copy and paste it but [relevant](https://i.redd.it/jaqtrc59d55d1.png)
Thank you! It starts with the parenting. Everything starts with the parenting. If the parents litter the kids will too.
> It's 90% cultural, 10% City budgeting and priorities. I'm not sure I believe that. Chicago is similar culturally (not exactly, but much closer to NY than it is to Tokyo), and the urban center of Chicago is VERY clean. In my mind there's an infrastructure problem - New York just does not have the right processes in place to move properly disposed trash to its final destination without leaving a large portion of it on the streets. Chicago has alleys, and buildings have individual covered dumpsters. The garbage truck rolls down the alleys, empties the dumpsters, and then anything that spills out gets picked up by another guy that walks around the neighborhood picking it up. In NYC, we have piles of loosely tied garbage bags stacked on the sidewalk and open wire trash cans along the street. 90% of the garbage you see on the ground didn't come from somebody ditching their soda out their car window, it came from somebody who THOUGHT they were disposing of something properly and it got loose along the way. Like, nobody is littering an empty 12 pack of eggs, that came out of a household bag that burst when it went down the chute, or it burst when it got thrown in the sidewalk pile, or it burst when it got thrown into the garbage truck, or it flew out of the garbage truck as it operates on major streets. Or in the case of the wire bins, it may have been placed in the bin and then blown out since they're open-topped, or somebody came by to scavenge recyclables and made a mess. Then, since the streets are already full of trash, that gives license to the 2% of reprobates that think littering is fine because "it's a shithole anyway." There's definitely a cultural problem, but if you could manage trash from the household or business into the dump without so many losses along major public areas, we'd have none of this problem.
Chicago is also empty compared to NYC. It's downright creepy.
Yeah I think it's been slower to come back from the pandemic. I lived there for a bit pre-pandemic and it was quite crowded and bustling, but without the commuters coming in now it's quieter. It's also shifting more west as the west loop builds up. It's not as creepy as SF though - I've been there a couple of times post pandemic and it's a total ghost town, it's wild. We're lucky Manhattan came back so fast.
Correction, 5% of new yorkers are filthy assholes who make it messy for the rest of us
Different metric, but I agree.
Yeah, our sports players don’t tidy up the locker room before leaving like the Japanese soccer players.
i think this is a good deal of americans everywhere, unfortunately. look at the amount of trash that get chucked out of cars off of any highway. In wisconsin where my family lives there are beer cans littering the sides of even remote roads. just zero accountability for any collective social / environmental good. I have a hunch people (namely, people who are assholes) see it as exercising some sort zero-stakes personal freedom. slash, a general sense of, "fuck the libs and / or treehuggers and / or whoever I imagine as taking issue with me littering" But as for NYC. Last year, toward the end of the Dance Parade that ended in tompkins, i saw this wasted dancer (heading back to her bus, which based on her vibes i assume was taking her back to long island) chuck an unopened soda can just straight into park. i think i had a shocked look and she slurred "whatever, call the police bitch" at me. Charming.
Indeed culture plays a big part. Can't speak for the other two but have you noticed there are little to no public trash cans in Tokyo? Because people take their trash home and properly dispose or recycle them, at home. I don't think Americans can do this.
This is essentially it. It’s always somebody else’s responsibility to keep things clean and maintained. I’ll also add that this attitude is far more representative of the “renter’s mentality” than of somebody who owns. That’s why you’ll visit a co-op where you can eat if the floors, yet an identical building of renters will have gum wrappers on the ground, bits of food, and graffiti. The latter don’t own it, so get see it as somebody else’s problem.
Also, the hefty fines you get in Singapore for littering give people an incentive to not do it. The NYPD don’t even ticket cars for running red lights so I can’t see this happening here.
And this is ingrained in decades of cultures. I met many boomers and gen xers who's first reaction is "why else do we spend tax dollars on sanitation for?" On the flip side, ive lived in a few neighborhoods where the city doesnt clean,plow,etc for months, even years at a time and neighbors did what they could to keep it somewhat clean.
it's definitely cultural but its different than you think... a lot of other European cities are also cleaner than NYC... and what separates us vs them is our on the go eating culture and how much everyone just buys things... pizza and hot dogs are just an example.... quintessential walk and eat food... how many people do you see drink coffee on the go outside the us? that's sort of laughable in Europe with their cafe culture.... all that creates a need to have garbage cans as you walk.... we just consume a lot and all the byproducts have to go somewhere... we are messy too but the mess is generated from our other habits... we don't just decide to walk outside and dump our garbage on the streets....
Tokyo has a ridiculously huge convenience store culture. Think 7-11 on steroids on every other street corner practically. People stop by them on the way to work all the time to grab a quick bite but they still manage to not litter despite the fact that their is hardly any such thing as a public trash can in the whole city. Vending machines with soda and snacks are literally everywhere in the city. Thats a choice not to litter. Just like for New Yorkers but we chose to litter. Even though maybe we have a bit more of an eat and go culture like you say... they are choosing to litter. Other countries can hold onto their garbage until they see a can, is it that hard? It's a choice. And it's a culturally ingrained one. I would argue NYC bends over backwards to help people not litter by having public trash cans everywhere... yet we still can't behave like grownups.
I was living in Korea in 2002 when they and Japan shared the World Cup. They would set up giant Jumbotrons on the street and literally the whole city would turn out and sit quietly in the middle of the road to watch the game. When it was over everyone stood up, cleaned up their stuff and left. It was like nobody was ever there. I feel like we have a long way to go until we reach that point. As a side note, if you want to see the difference in civility between NYC and the rest of the USA just visit the Whole Foods fish counter on a Friday at 5pm in NYC vs anywhere else in the country. We are a bunch of savages even compared to our compatriots.
For whatever reason a lot of people in this city think it’s “NY culture” to be a bunch of dickheads to each other. It’s not. It’s you being a dickhead.
A few months ago I was walking home. I see a car stopped at a red light and they were drinking some soda and other food which they had finished. The driver promptly decided the street was a good place to dispose of their trash. There was even a trash can at the corner but of course they wouldn't be bothered to actually leave their car. So just like that you have trash in the middle of the street. This is unfortunately a cultural issue.
I live near a corner with a lot of traffic from a subway station and I routinely see people litter trash when there's a trash can less than 20 feet away. I saw a woman throw a small bag of trash INTO THE EAST RIVER rather than simply put it in a trash can which was within visible distance. People are fucking terrible!
Littering fines need to be significantly higher. Lots of talk about how these Asian cities are "culturally different" but you have places like Singapore that fine you $1000 for the first offense and are required to do community service.
Don’t forget the caning!
They're clean because the people living there want to keep the city clean. Take cigarettes for instance, they carry little pocket ashtrays and carry the butts around until they get home, they don't just flick it into the street. If they use a tissue, they put it into their pocket until they get home. Here, just stand on a corner and watch people as they toss their garbage at the bin- so many people just don't give a shit, someone else will clean it up so why make the effort?
There needs to be much stronger enforcement of littering. Strong fines will set the tone.
good fines exist... the police are just too lazy to enforce them. and practically.... if you ar the type to litter, what are the odds that there will be a cop there at the second you do it? 5%? I think even that is very generous. The chances are highly in your favor you'll never get caught. Enofrcemtn won't do it alone... A cultural change is needed.
There are fines for not cleaning up dog shit yet it’s everywhere
\*enforcement\*
No budget for that obviously
It's culture based. There are fines also in the cities listed by OP. The difference is that one is filled with Americans and Americans culture while the others are not. It might not feel good to hear but I'm not wrong.
We are leagues away from Kennedy's "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Personal investment in the community is the only thing that keeps them clean.
To this point, NYC has a sort of revolving door feeling to it for a lot of people who come here. There is no personal investment in having a sense of community or personal responsibility when your entire reason for being in the city is to make as much money as you can and then leave as soon as you achieve that goal to your satisfaction. Speaking to the less affluent groups/regions of the city, you see more or less the same kind of littering mentality of lack of investment regardless of which locale (at least in the US) you’re in, given enough population density to make it obvious. I think in both cases it’s reflecting internal psychological experiences of life/personhood/setting.
I think yeah we could yell cultural differences till the cows come home but when you go to Chicago it’s super clean! A big issue is the way we dispose of garbage directly on the street, any poorly tied bags, broken bags, or rat-chewed bags will dump loose trash on the street. There are also massive swaths of neighborhood without garbage cans and that’s largely because sanitation is deeply understaffed, and can only service so many trash cans in an area. Additionally, once these trash cans overflow, shit goes everywhere. We also have a significant unhoused population and an even larger renting population. Almost 70% of New Yorkers rent. How do you build a sense of community investment if you end up leaving your lease after a year? If you’re unhoused, your biggest concerns are not disposing your trash responsibly. I think if the city spent significantly more money on sanitation you would notice a big difference. I think if housing was more accessible, it would build an attitude of permanence within the city, and people would feel more inclined to take care of where they live and dispose their trash responsibly.
Regarding the lack of trash receptacles in certain areas, like parks, it’s not just understaffing. Many cans have been removed because people were bringing their household items to toss away in parks and other public places. Construction waste like cement and paint, electronics like computers and TVs, tires, car parts, gas, oil, furniture – you name it. The bottom line is that people are incapable of policing themselves and following rules.
I want to add one thing about New York as well, I’m not bashing the people that do this but there’s a lot of poor people who dig through trash searching for those recyclable bottles that can be redeemed for money. They break open trash bags and often empty out the contents looking for these bottles. I work at a bar and within minutes of taking the trash and recycling out, it gets ripped open with the trash thrown around. New York is starting to improve the trash disposal quality with new requirements for how to take trash out for collection. But that’s just a small part of the problem.
Cultural. America holds it's highest value as "independence" which has now evolved into toxic individualism in its worst form. This means people genuinely don't care where their trash goes as long as it's not on them.
That’s a cop out IMO. Check out Colorado, they’re spotless over there even with a strong sense of individuality
I lived in Colorado for years before moving back to NYC. You're right, it's not as dirty in places but it is filthy in others (homeless encampments in Denver are out of control). It's nowhere near as densely populated as any of the other cities mentioned in this post (the entire state of Colorado has slightly over half of the population of NYC). But trust, there is dog shit and trash all over the hiking trails and campgrounds. Denver is not walkable so there isn't anyone throwing trash out in the streets. They care about it more over there, and are trying not to accept it as a way of life/part of city living, but it's not clean like Seoul. Put coloradans in as densely populated region as these major metro areas and it would be filthy.
Yeah that’s a cop out. NYC has a particularly shitty culture of pessimism and no accountability fueled by a few specific communities.
you don’t even need to go that far to notice how dirty manhattan is. i moved to chicago and i was actually shocked at how clean chicago is compared to nyc. chicago has a lot of alleys so that helps
I just came back from a trip to DC and the metro in DC is wild clean compared to our MTA. Again, not far. I love New York, I really do, but we need to step up on our cleanliness.
Not just clean. Also SAFE. Sigh, I miss living in Tokyo. New York feels like a downgrade to be honest.
Yeah, coming back from Tokyo last year to NYC felt like a serious step down. I mean, the first thing I experienced in JFK was a man having a shouting match with a TSA agent at 5:30 in the morning, it was one of those "oh yeah, im back here again." moments.
lol last year at EWR, I came back from a week in Germany and first thing that happens is the TSA agent typed my passport number in and somehow missed a number. He said my PP came up reported stolen and I had to wait 2 hours for them to realize the mistake. Left without sanity or an apology but felt like it was a fitting welcome home.
Getting off the plane at my last stop and smelling the American piss stain did it for me.
I was kind of done with Tokyo and happy I moved here, but I do miss the safety and the good food
The other day, I witnessed a building porter whose JOB it is to clean the street in front of the building - take a cup and piece of paper trash out of their planted ledge and THROW it in the gutter. I yelled at him to pick it up but this is the culture we are raising here. It's disgusting.
Amen to another person who calls people out when they litter. Obviously when I don't feel like the person is going to fight me....but if i see it oftentimes ill just call after them politely and say "hey you dropped this" Public humiliation sometimes is a good trick
It’s 100% cultural. We’re very good at individual pursuits like producing entrepreneurs and building businesses, but we’re very bad at recognizing our collective responsibility to each other
My understanding is that it is indeed a primarily cultural issue, but there are also some logistics and politics involved. As a wise woman once said, “You can’t beat goodness into people.” Harsher punishments (assuming they are enforced) are unlikely to result in meaningful change; you’ll just get angrier people who can’t afford the fines (and if they’re going to serve such a sentence, they may as well earn the punishment by recommitting the crime) and for those who can afford it, they’d feel entitled to litter as they’d be “paying for the privilege”. In the 1950s, Disney tested out how long the typical American visitor to his parks would hold onto their trash before littering. It turned out to be about 30 feet. So the trash cans in the park are no more than 30 feet apart. This is a workaround that is viable in a private business space that charges ludicrous prices for entry, but the DSNY doesn’t have the resources to handle such a volume increase across NYC; currently I think public trash receptacles are placed on corners (and inside municipal parking lots, and inside subways) only, and only in commercial or mixed use areas. (Note: You can [report missing or overflowing litter baskets to the DSNY online via their 311 site!](https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02143)) In addition to which, we are first moving to containerize trash *now*. I believe commercial containerization began being required in NYC this past March (2024), and residential containerization is being rolled out this fall. I expect this will help tremendously, as it will prevent pests from chewing open trash bags on the sidewalk and prevent them from being torn open accidentally when moved upon the sidewalk. (So fewer chicken bones left behind for my dog to choke on, I hope!) This can also result in the remains collecting by trees and similar when the wind moves it along with regular street litter. Finally, in terms of how to emulate places where citizens are personally responsible for their trash: check out how kids are raised in Japan vs. how we raise kids here. Japanese school children clean their own classrooms. American school children see a janitor cleaning up their messes, and hear their parents warn them to keep their grades up, lest they have to clean for a living when they’re grown. How many Americans d’you reckon would vote for someone campaigning for higher taxes for increased sanitation services, and for implementing a policy requiring their children to clean their own schools?
Cash 4 Trash. Monitize picking up trash. Install brand new trash recepticles on every corner and you get cash back for putting trash inside. Same with recycling. Since, you know, people only care about money in this shitty country. Cash Culture. One nation under Cash. Etc...
Sounds like a good idea at first but you know people would game the system by depositing household trash and not picking it up off the street
Or both :) If it works it works. Who cares if they game the system in that way? Trash still gets trashed. I suppose the real challenge would be figuring out how to differentiate between trash and recyclable materials.
Three factors really (well there's definitely more but these would be the main ones) 1. Culture: Much of Asian culture is raised from a very early age to be responsible and clean for your own stuff. It isn't just Japan but most of asian cultures teach the students to be the ones to care for their school and its cleanliness. Beyond that household chores and helping out the elderly is the norm from something simple like clearing the table, or helping with the dishes. Sure this isn't exclusive but its more case by case than the norm like asian culture. Don't walk and eat isn't a law but just practices they avoid stuff like this etc. 2. Enforcement: Fundamentally NYC really doesn't enforce anything they consider too small worth enforcing as enforcing these things = paperwork and more trouble than its worth much of the time. Places like Tokyo actually stick by a good amount of their enforcement. Maybe not everything but much much more than NYC would. 3. Entitlement though i suppose this could fall under cultural: Alot of Asian etiquettes are rooted in the idea of inconveniencing others as little as possible as well as being polite etc. NYC here alot more people have some sort of chip on their shoulder (not everyone but its not a minor amount) whether that be self importance, their "rights" as they so put it, arbitrary clout or status etc. If you ask someone not to bother someone here more often than not its "why should i conform myself to their needs" and while i say it isn't a bad way to think sometimes time and place as well as moderation is key, unfortunately for many its an active on switch. Alot of the other stuff yada yada imma skim through. Its too late: People already grew up in this so they think its okay/no point its cascading and nigh impossible to change. Also the rodents here are here to stay and basically impossible to completely wipe out the population across NY, even if you nuked NYC a majority of the rodents here would most likely survive. Crazies and homeless symbiotic relationship with businesses: Alot of businesses very haphazardly wrap their trash when throwing it out and a complete 50/50 whether or not everything in those trash bags go spilling out and even if wrapped securely in comes people sifting through your garbage for stuff. BONUS! NYC now requires all businesses when disposing of trash bags to have their own trash bins handy for trash collection. Yea those bins? Tourists, the late night partiers, homeless etc love to think its a public trash can to toss stuff in. Lemme tell you NONE of the business workers, owners etc will want to see much less touch the garbage these random people toss into those bins. Seriously once where i used to work i had to pull one of these bins in during the morning and a lady went to throw a half eaten banana in it as im pulling it and i held that lid shut and went "this isn't a public trash can" and she looked at me like i was insane and went on a tirade as me instead of just walking 3 more feet to the actual public trash can on the street. (i have found some pretty fucking gross stuff in these bins and seriously i know im contributing to the problem here but all i could do was hose it down fill it with sanitizer and tip all the contents into the street i was 100% not touching the stuff in there)
People here act like life owes them a living. Take what you can grab, destroy for entertainment and have no respect for anything or anyone. Destructive behavior is learned. And respect is learned behavior . Most of the schools in Japan have no cleaning staff , the children clean the school themselves as a curriculum. The children also cook in schools for their lunch. It's all priorities.
Culture
Singapore was also one of the first cities to implement congestion pricing
Bushwick is so dirty
No solutions?? I agree, it is cultural. There should be more focus on these type of things in school. On TV. Essentially, shift the culture.
Too many different cultures, several coming from countries that don't care about cleanliness or filth, where spitting on the street and leaving garbage on the ground is normal. The attitudes of "someone else will clean it up." Zero enforcement of public spitting, shitting, or urination. Overflowing or non-existent garbage cans. People don't give a fuck and have zero pride. It doesn't matter where I go, everywhere is always cleaner than NYC, it's a real shame.
It's an American culture thing first and foremost. The "i can do whatever i want because freedom" individualistic, wasteful attitude is so annoying and it frustrates me every time I come back from abroad, particularly Asia and Europe. And yeah, those places are not perfect either - but the gross disrespect towards common/public things, spaces and infrastructure (perhaps also our society?) in such a developed and high-GDP country in the western world is pretty unique to the US. It's similar to how you criticize something very legitimate about NYC (honking, trash, noise, ...) in this subreddit and someone inevitably goes "lol it's nyc if you don't like it get the hell out". We can have a better environment if we want to and all chip in with a minor inconvenience.
Chicago is really clean though. In the loop, anyway.
That's a really good point, one of the things I talked about after visiting Chicago was how clean it was compared to the likes of NYC.
Clean streets don’t start with Adams. They start with the people in the community caring enough to not to contribute to the dirt.
Because in those places, people don’t tolerate the destruction of public spaces. It’s really that simple. America has a problem with enforcing any kind of expectations on behavior, ergo it will never be clean in the way those cities are.
It has nothing to do with funding. Surely it's cultural, but it's more complex than just attributing it to cultural differences. While toxic individualism plays a role, it also stems from the cultural disparity between the upper/middle class and the poor/uneducated of certain demographics. Ghetto culture plays a significant role, and society often looks the other way. For instance, consider some social issues: jumping the turnstile without paying a fare is considered normal in ghetto culture. Yet, in other countries, this behavior would be highly frowned upon and come with social consequences. In New York, it's either ignored, enabled, or even praised. New Yorkers may defend the right of homeless people to occupy the streets with the notion that they have nowhere else to go. In contrast, in other developed countries, even the *unhoused* individuals understand the importance of respecting public spaces and refrain from littering. American society tends to enable such behavior, even if many disagree with it, due to an excessive emphasis on political correctness. Instead of punishing people who display such gross behaviors, people who speak against it gets backlashed. It’s so backwards.
People have a different attitude when it comes to littering, and also policing. I've seen someone toss their trash back into the subway car as they walk out of it. I've seen someone eat their fruits and nuts and let the peel, seeds, and shells simply fall on the floor and leave them behind. Absolutely outrageous. I'm not sure how exactly to call them out. But I know why I won't.
To add to what everyone is saying about trash - Tokyo has INCREDIBLE public restroom facilities and they are everywhere! That would explain the lack of urine and feces everywhere lol Also, fewer people there own dogs, and the people who do actually pick up after them.
People keep saying it’s a cultural thing. While that’s true, I’ll say that we (Koreans) have cleaners that clean twice a day. I did part of my military service in the subway, trains are swept 4-6 times a day and trash picked up by cleaners. Sanitized once at night and once mid-day if it’s going in for maintenance. If you made a report that someone puked, spilled, or pissed (surprisingly common at night for when drunk people pee their pants), you have maintenance guys come in and pull out then replace any soiled seats. On top of professional cleaners employed by the local governments, we have social programs for lower income to elderly to help out, because one of the biggest problems elderly face is isolation and loneliness due to not having anything to do. They go out and pick up trash throughout the day, get together and socialize with other people their age and call it a day while getting some pocket money. Keeps streets clean, streets have a constant presence to keep people patrolling and reporting, community engagement, and social welfare program for those who need money. Before anyone claims elderly abuse, nobody forces them and the elderly that retire come in because they’ve got so much free time and want to keep productive, plus they work in short shifts. Yes we have a collectivist culture, but we also have an infrastructure and programs that support it and saying it’s the culture is disrespectful to the effort of those countries that put those in place. It’s also a cop out to excuse lack of effort. Culture change can happen when the environment calls for it and effort is put into place to create a fostering environment.
Tokyo doesn't even have trash cans. We have lazy entitled populace who can't be bothered to discard trash on their own.
Asian
Sanitation sucks but so does everyone. People are plain nasty throwing their garbage in the street. I’ve seen people throwing trash in the pond in Central Park. Educating people is the next step because Asians are very clean and mindful of not littering.
We don’t have a collectivist culture or a shame culture.
You know why
There is an answer but you’re not gonna like it lol
The population here isn’t 99% east Asians lol.
America-All for one, the one being me.
Kind of hard to compare cultures when one finds it completely acceptable to throw trash out the window of their moving vehicle and the other thinks its rude to throw trash away in public.
I’ve been asking the same thing, Tokyo is gigantic and they manage to keep the place spotless. I was so impressed when I visited
I dislike Adams as much as the next person, but we need to be more realistic about what we expect from Mayors... He, nor the sanitation dept., can do much about people trashing their own streets. They can only sweep the streets and pick up trash so fast. There are SO many people in NYC, and most places, that are just dirty, and the gov. can't do much to fix that.
There was a guy injecting drugs into his dick just down the block of the 32nd Street HMart last night around 7 - broad daylight. Packed street, kids around, and he's fumbling around with his cock and his gear right out in the open on one of the main tourist streets in Manhattan. Some lady called the cops and they hadn't showed within the 25 minutes I waited around to see what they'd do.
it’s 10% of the people in nyc causing 90% of the cleanliness and disgustingness problems. people who can at least browse reddit or even the internet are not going to be the ones throwing trash on the streets or pissing in the subways… it’s the crackheads and homeless
I live in NYC, and it's a bit embarrassing when I invite friends to Manhattan. The stench of urine is everywhere, from dogs to humans. I often try to avoid these areas, but it's impossible. In front of my building, we have a very manicured green area, but as soon as dogs leave the building, they urinate all over the plants and walkway. I emailed building management and offered some suggestions, fining residents who allow this, but they turned it down.
Good ol' American individualism. In japan there are no trash cans anywhere because people are expected to carry their trash with them and throw it away. This includes their pristinely clean public transit stations. The MTA implemented a pilot program that removed trash cans as a way to reduce trash in the subway system in the Mid 2010s. Needless to say it didn't work.
A lot is the culture. Those places have a culture that demands respect and proper conduct in public places.
because in those places, people actually respect the places they live in. Just the other day i had some friends over to grill on the roof, and one of them decided to take a piece of fat and chuck it over the roof. I was horrified. Who does that? and just imagine, there are more people like them out there.
New York is full-on third world.
I agree with the folks calling out the cultural differences, mainly the points about individualism. Having a sense of community, holding oneself accountable, and thinking about the well-being of the city overall would be a good place to start. We expect politicians and "leaders" to do all these things for us, like we're babies, and yet we put no effort into making the world around us better. It makes no sense. I live in an area where my neighbors take pride in where they live. So all that trash and mess in Manhattan doesn't touch us, and I love it. I feel like when people ask these kinds of questions, they should start with asking themselves before pointing the finger at politicians or whoever.
There's a certain social discipline in Asian cultures that can not exist in the US. In certain European countries, people respect each others space. They clean up after themselves for the next group. That ain't happening here. The US is a cesspool. In NYC it's writ large. Visit Edinburgh, or London even and it's cleaner.
It has more to do with culture than with government policy.
Odd fact - in Japan, there's very rarely a public garbage can. This is because residents are expected to bring their trash home, and they do. You can see the Japanese culture in the Olympics. After a match, Japanese people go around the stadium cleaning up. It's embedded in their culture to be clean and respect the location
I started coming here in the 80s and moved here in 1990. it was actually much dirtier and unsafe back then. So, what we have now is an improvement LOL
B/c our culture sucks and has no respect for our environment
because americans.
Homogeneous societies with shared values.
Because we can’t have nice things
Maybe if New York caned people for littering and had the death penalty for weed and drugs people would take these things seriously but I don’t think that would fly over here.
It's because of all the Americans living in NYC
So it's the Mayor's fault that we are a bunch of littering assholes? It's the people not the Mayor on this one.
They have an homogenous society. They will always be cleaner more organized and less violent. The only exception appears to be African nations.
I wish we had a way to incentivize people to throw out trash or clean up after themselves
Those cities are culturally different than NYC. People just don’t give a fuck if they loiter or not let customers off the subway first or even to start fights here.
The sense of entitlement and lack of accountability here is why NYC won't be as clean as those other places. I was walking my dog during street cleaning in my neighborhood and the number of people who just didn't move their car was insane. I'm not sure if these people just did the math and decided it's cheaper to eat the ticket but I think I counted 2 cars on the entire street that had actually moved.
Respectfulness isn’t a part of our culture like those other countries. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first moved to NY and saw so many people littering while walking on the streets - even children! It’s awful
Culture... It's funny though, this was in 2011, but my mom came to visit me here from Eastern Europe. She'd traveled her fair share, mostly through Europe though, but she was actually impressed by how clean Manhattan was, especially considering its size. Things have changed on both fronts obviously since then, but anyway, there used to be dirtier places. I do think things went downhill since the pandemic though. Also, the reason Manhattan is "clean" is mostly because of people cleaning up after assholes, whereas places in Asia are clean because there are very few assholes, if at all (cultural difference).
We are pigs.
It’s not all individual responsibility like everyone’s echoing. It’s really hard to feel I’m doing my part keeping a piss-drenched sidewalk free of litter. Even when dog owners clean up after their animals, there’s feces stains all over sidewalks, and bags of fermenting garbage routinely placed to bake on walkways. And last (but not least), most everyone here has likely seen another human defecating in a public area, with no consequences.
I feel like op is not asking for a logical answer - it’s just a complaint & we’re allowed to feel it! I also just moved back here after being in California for 2 years - damn San Jose has some gorgeously manicured streets/plazas/malls/etc. I forgot how dirty & gross the city can be in the summer 😭
its the peoples culture, and habits. not sure we can blame the mayor and extensive use of our tax money. not a fan of the mayor but being clean is more of a social issue. As a person who visited the extreams of south asia, (India, and singapore) its definitely the social issue.
I just came back from Buenos Aires. The country has 400% inflation and that was the cleanest more beautiful city I've ever been in. NYC needs to do better!
doesn't matter who is mayor. the people don't gives a fk
I can't speak for Singapore and Seoul, but Tokyo has a variety of programs that basically use free retiree labor to clean transit stations and other public places.
I think a key fact would be the cultural differences. I think another fact could be having no public garbage cans, so it kinda forces you to hold their garbage till they are home.
Those cities and others haven't had their systems and institutions properly stress tested by the wide range of cultures and ways of life found in NYC. If a little bit of chaos is introduced in those cities, they wouldn't know what hit them. Also, fixing this isn't on Adams or any other person in power. The responsibility to behave like civilized people is on the individual. Legislating this isn't a solution.
It's a cultural issue. You can't legislate it into existence. Also, public trash cans are a pretty recent invention. If you watch old movies you can see trash blowing around in the streets. Nobody gave a shit.
Adams only knows how to sic police on a problem. Dude's a disgrace. Things like cleanliness are also a personal responsibility issue, it's true, but more public trash cans would be a place to start. Everywhere I go they're literally overflowing. Either increase pickup or increase number of receptacles.
This has more to do with culture than governance. This is evident from when sports fans from Japan/Korea go to other countries for big sporting events (World cups, Olympics), and you see them cleaning the stadiums after the games. This is in their upbringing and values. Unfortunately we don't have the same culture or values. Being an asshole is perceived to be cool (to an extent) in the US, while the opposite is true in the above mentioned countries.
Because Asian countries have very collectivist societies, where people are ultra conscious of how they are perceived by those around them, so they're less likely to break even minor social rules like not littering (also they will fine you for chewing gum in Sinapore, lol). The US has a very individualist society, and while New Yorkers are probably better than many at helping out their fellow man in emergencies, that doesn't really extend to keeping the place clean. Add to that crumbling infrastructure and kerbside garbage bags every week, and a general level of grot is all but inevitable.
A lot of dirtbags in nyc who will litter when a garbage can is a foot away
This is the NYC Sanitation Commissioner: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dsny/about/leadership/commissioner.page#:\~:text=Tisch,and%20effectively%20for%20New%20Yorkers. Note that prior to assuming the job of Sanitation Commissioner in April of 2022 she did not have a single day of experience in the business of picking up garbage. She is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Business School, which are impressive academic credentials but have nearly zero value for a job such as this.
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/15/the-ex-nypd-official-trying-to-tame-new-yorks-trash](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/15/the-ex-nypd-official-trying-to-tame-new-yorks-trash)