Littering is one of the worst habits that most of us have; and much of the time we litter without even thinking twice about it; it’s a long and ill formed habit. Empty coke tins, chewing gums, water packets, ice cream cup covers, used mineral water bottles, bus tickets, plastic covers, chocolate wrappers, cigarette butts, matchsticks, banana and orange peels and the list goes on.

Some people say littering can only be stopped when government starts slapping fine on litterers. But there is another way too. We can each of us personally stop littering, and spread the message around. But I found it a difficult habit to break and it took me sometime before I could stop myself from littering unconsciously and out of habit.

I present some guidelines here that can be used by beginners to prevent what I call ‘compulsive littering’.

a.       Reason to stop littering: The first thing one must do is to find a reason to stop littering. Here are some reasons that may convince you to stop littering.

1. Social Obligation: Most of us pay taxes. And most of us are also of opinion that a majority of tax amount is ‘swallowed’ by politicians. If this is correct, only a very less amount of tax reaches the department in charge of cleaning the roads. So we can help by reducing the work for the underpaid sweepers.
2. Personal Discipline: Anti-littering is an exercise in self discipline. It increases our will power because we litter out of convenience and to stop it we have to exert a greater self control. Hence, to stop littering means we are having a better self discipline. Later we can simply apply the same self control in breaking other personal habits. And this in turn boosts your self esteem.
3. Improve Analytical Skills: Sounds weird? But it is true! You can increase your analytical skills by checking your littering habits. How? When you stop littering, it is not a simple vow that you take. You pair action to your oath. And by doing it you are continually faced with conflict between your laziness and your self discipline. Your mind automatically provides you with excuses to litter and you have to reason your mind to stop it. Stop littering and you will soon know what I mean.

b.      Open goodies near the shop: Whenever you buy a coke tin, chewing gum, chocolate, chips, or ice creams, make sure you stop near the shop to open the packing. That way you can make use of the shop’s waste bin to dispose of the packing material of your food.

c.       Use your pockets to litter: I do not know how many of you would like to do this but I regularly practice this. I always keep the back pocket of my trousers to keep chocolate wrappers, chewing gum foils, bus tickets, etc. Later I empty my pockets at the nearest waste bin or in the trash cans of my home. Girls could use small compartments of their handbags to keep such litter. Make sure you fold sticky wrappers properly so that they do not smear your trousers or handbags.

d.      Litter in commercial places: I call this selective littering. I litter liberally when I am in commercial buildings. In fact, I use these buildings to take a break from rigid self discipline. But I choose such buildings with care. I use only expensive shopping malls like Lifestyle, Central, Multiplexes, etc to litter; because such places hire lots of workers to keep the place clean and litter is removed almost as soon as you throw it down. In fact, by littering in such places you can improve employment! I also empty my pockets in commercial spaces. I throw my movie ticket in the theater seat after watching the film. But be very watchful of this habit. You can easily use this reason to become lazy again. Also make sure the mall is in good business because only such places pay attention to cleanliness and employ sweepers. Do not litter in already dirty malls because dirty malls means the complex is in losses and such people would try to find shortcuts to clear their litter – they simply dump all their litter on the side roads! Also do not litter in government malls and parks. Because, as we all know, government people are lazier than us and they never clear the litter properly. And they also do not increase the number of sweepers. You would simply be increasing the burden of the existing sweepers. Who says anti-littering habit cannot increase analytical skills!

e.      Challenge your friends: There are moments when you litter just because you think your friends would laugh at you if you stuff waste paper into your pockets or carry plastic covers in hand until you find a waste bin. But you can simply make use of this situation to show off before your friends. You can -even lecture them on anti-littering until they run away from you. On a serious note, these are supreme moments of self discipline and take them as challenges to your will power. By regularly preventing compulsive littering before your friends, they would eventually take up your habit too and stop littering.

f.        Right to curse our government: Anti-littering attitude gives you a right to curse our government. In fact, you find many times when get really angry at the lack of waste bins at proper distances on the roads. I use the moment to let my heat out on the government and no one can challenge me at that time because it is a right I have earned. Nobody can say I am littering. But remember, the lack of waste bins could be a real headache too. There were many times when I almost lost my self discipline because I could not find any waste bins for many blocks and my pockets have become full with litter. It is a real challenge to our discipline and could easily break your good habits.

g.       Prevent train littering: Most of us take it as a birth-right to throw waste out of the train windows. Of course government gives us great motivation by placing not even a single dust bin in the whole train! But just think of this – during travel, eating is not done out of hunger but to pass the time. On an average I think I can safely say 7 out of every 10 passengers buy or bring something to eat on the journey. Eating automatically means littering. Chips covers, packaging papers, wrappers, orange peels, empty water packets and plastic bottles, etc.

      How many people travel on a train on any given day, on an average? Let us say there are ten bogies on one train and each bogie has about 150 seats. How many times did any of you guys travelled on empty trains where you extend your legs on the opposite seat? Not often, right? So we can safely assume every bogie has atleast 50 passengers on an average. That makes 500 passengers on a train. Given the assumption that 7 out of every 10 travellers buy eatables and, hence, litter, we have around 350 people littering on a single train per day. How many trains run on a day across our country? Shall we say 5 trains per state as the least count? That means there are 5 x 28 = 140 trains running every single day. So we have 49,000 people throwing waste out of the windows across our country every day. Which means every year about 1,78,85,000 (nearly 18 million) people go out of their hometowns to throw litter across the countryside!

This is a very low estimate on an average day. There are more bogies per train, more trains per state, more travelers on weekends and festival seasons and more special trains during holidays. So how much does the annual litter around the countryside amount to? Whew!

Don’t you think it is time we carried plastic bags to put our waste during the travel? Of course, some travelers would laugh at you. But you can certainly tell them the above calculations, can’t you? You would certainly have a couple of converts every time you explain you fellow travelers why they should not throw stuff out of the train windows!

I could keep writing guidelines after guidelines. But I would like to hear them from you soon! Hope this little article will be helpful in your move to stop ‘compulsive littering’ and boost your self esteem! Shortly I will post another article on certain facts on littering and garbage. I am, at the moment, still researching material for it. Meanwhile, I would love to hear from you guys.

deadmanswill