Riders who are above dealing with their own rubbish

[Scintilla]

#South Australia

When touring in this state the near-absence of roadside litter was quite noticeable. Campaign for container-deposit legislation, nation-wide.

Will not deal with discarded bike tubes and gel-wrappers, but it is a start on a much better 'state-of-mind'.

[Usernoname]

On my morning walks with the dog around Benowa/Southport area of Gold Coast I sometimes see people on their walk (no dog) with a bag and picking up rubbish. Mostly older ladies, but sometimes couples and women with a kid. It seems to only take one PERSON for it not to be someone's else problem, others join in and not too much rubbish around my area now. The's very little you can do about diccheeds - on the road or not.

[kenwstr]

Hmm, only been OS twice, NZ then later Britain and Denmark. Denmark was remarkably clean and tidy, not so much as a dropped wrapper anywhere we went. Despite refurbishing works being carried out here and there. Every job was tidied up absolutely spotless, nothing left lying around or out of place anywhere. Australia definitely has way more litter than any of these places.

Yeah, been noticing more cycling debris on recent rides, picked up a fully charged and working taillight the other day. Just had a busted clip which is an inexpensive replacement part. Pretty nice light too

Ken

[ColinOldnCranky]

Just an observation for those who see value in comparing the state of cleanliness of one place against another.

I doubt that any of us make our assessment by counting the wrappers per square metre or other firm data. Rather it is a feeling, a perception, a "vibe".

Now I ridden for many MANY years and I like to explore new towns and cities when travelling. However EVERYWHERE gives that aura of cleanliness and freshness in the cool and after some light rain or fog or whatever. I love my early rides in Perth because everything seems so much fresher then.

I've ridden around Paris early morning and during the rest of the day. Ditto regional towns, Rome, Italian hill towns (THAT is an adventure on a unicycle ), Black Rock and elsewhere in Mauritius, just a couple of days in London, and so forth. And I can say with absolute conviction that even a dirty city like Paris is a wonderland of texture and cleanliness in the morning before the sun starts drying things out but after that it is grubby grubby grubby. In the few days I stayed in constantly damp Edinburgh it never SEEMED dirty without a conscious assessment and itemised what rubbish I saw. (Edinburg over that week was not bad BTW but it was probably o cleaner than, say, Adelaide. Adelaide, like Perth, can't avoid APPEARING a little grubby due to it's Mediterranean dryness.)

The nature of vegetation also counts for a lot. Dry verges and dull green foliage does not compare favorably to deciduous trees covered in leaves of lighter shades of green.

So comparing places like South Australia and Perth is a little difficult unless we go to things like boring data. There are very few moments of "fresheness" in Perth and Adelaide even if the warmth and clear skies are so welcome.

Always worth reflecting on how we arrive at conclusions. It's often more emotive than evidence based.

[ColinOldnCranky]

In response to some who jumped to defend an attack on "lycra clad wanabes".

It was not meant to be about one group compared to otehrs and I regret the passing reference to skinny and fat tubes. However, some hae takie it as that and offered some defence of their postion. So...

I see heaps of flat bar bikes on 11/2" type tyres zipping past me along with the slick racers on drops. And I figure that fat tyred bikes also get flats simply because I ride on a 1 3/4" fatty and I must have gone through more than a couple of dozen tubes over ten years. I patch tubes a number of times before discarding so that's a fair number of punctures and I can't accept that I am some sort of statistical freak. yet offhand I can't recall ever picking up a 1 3/4" tube. I am sure that somewhere I have but it must be pretty rare. So while I can't quantify it, I DO have some basis for my original comment.

Regardless, and more to my original intent, there are too many riders who patch or replace and then leave their unwelcome 5hit for others to attend to. In the case of the OP the rider only had to pick it up and drop it in the bin five metres distant and a metre off his likely route. If that rider is reading this, I hope that next time you bin it.

On another defence (hardly) that others drop lolly wrappers, household rubbish and do not clean up their dog turds, I can't see the pint yo are making. Yes, you are right, there are many others that also leave rubbish around. But there are people who drive unlicensed and unroadworthy unregistered cars or drive drunk or in drug induced comas. Does that provide a defense for those that text while at the wheel?

[Mububban]

Selfish pigs. When I was over in France few years ago on a cycling holiday I rode up Alpe d'huez and I was astounded and dissapointed at the quantity of discarded gel wrappers I saw. Other places I went to in France were very clean but ADH was a pigsty.

I just did a 100km organised hill ride event yesterday, one sponsor was SIS who gave out 3 gels to each rider. I was disgusted to see all the empty wrappers on the roads I only saw one that had obviously been accidentally dropped, as it was still mostly full but popped as someone rode over it.

How hard is it to stop and go back and pick up an empty wrapper if you miss your jersey pocket and know you've dropped it?

Same with dead tubes. If you can carry a new one in your jersey pocket or saddle bag, logically the dead one will also fit in the same spot

[fat and old]

The nature of vegetation also counts for a lot. Dry verges and dull green foliage does not compare favorably to deciduous trees covered in leaves of lighter shades of green.

Oh yeah. Drive along any inland highway and it always shows the rubbish. The Newell for instance looks like a 2,000k tip until you realise that the Hume is just greener and hides the crapola.

Adelaide, like Perth, can't avoid APPEARING a little grubby due to it's Mediterranean dryness.

Try Gran Canaria, La Palma or Tenerife. Filthy dumps, cos there's no rain to wash down the white buildings. Mykonos is similar.

None of this counts however when comparing one Melbourne burb to another. Some areas just breed pigs.

[RobertL]

Yeah, been noticing more cycling debris on recent rides, picked up a fully charged and working taillight the other day. Just had a busted clip which is an inexpensive replacement part. Pretty nice light too

Ken

To be fair, that's not really littering. I guess that the light fell off and its owner was pretty annoyed to discover that it had, when they finally noticed it. I doubt that he or she deliberately threw it away.

[find_bruce]

The problem is that cyclists are people and, like other people they dump stuff all over the place. Just one of many examples is the tonnes of rubbish scattered around Everest

[human909]

The problem is that cyclists are people and, like other people they dump stuff all over the place. Just one of many examples is the tonnes of rubbish scattered around Everest

Apples and oranges this comparison. You might as well also be complaining about space junk.

[Ross]

Dog owner/walkers too. I've noticed a lot of discarded small twisted plastic bags of late that I presume are full of dog droppings. Why go to all the trouble of collecting and bagging the droppings then to just discard the bag? There are too many bags in too many different places for them just to be accidentally dropped.

[ColinOldnCranky]

Dog owner/walkers too. I've noticed a lot of discarded small twisted plastic bags of late that I presume are full of dog droppings. Why go to all the trouble of collecting and bagging the droppings then to just discard the bag? There are too many bags in too many different places for them just to be accidentally dropped.

You do the whole packing thing 'cos people saw their dog do the deed and people watch and judge. But once done it only takes a moment to surreptitiously drop it somewhere. In my experience, while bags of poop left laying about doesn't happen too generally, where it does happen a lot seems to at dog beaches.

BTW even though I started this thread, I don't believe that people dropping their tubes and gas and stuff on the side of the track is too common either.

[Arbuckle23]

Grots are grots, no matter what they drive, ride or walk.
The people leaving tubes etc around would leave other rubbish around no matter what they were doing in my opinion.

[kenwstr]

Yeah, been noticing more cycling debris on recent rides, picked up a fully charged and working taillight the other day. Just had a busted clip which is an inexpensive replacement part. Pretty nice light too

Ken

To be fair, that's not really littering. I guess that the light fell off and its owner was pretty annoyed to discover that it had, when they finally noticed it. I doubt that he or she deliberately threw it away.

Um, I suppose it didn't come across as humour to you then.
I accept the rider may have looked but not found it in the gutter.
I spotted the sun glinting off it on my side while climbing.

[djw47]

Welcome to Australia. I've never known a population to be so uncaring about their own local environment.

'
I some aspects this is starkly not true. Though maybe that is just the other sports I partake in and the groups they attract.. As somebody who pursues sports in our beautiful great outdoors, the difference between the way Australians, US and Europeans treat nature is stark. Australians at the top of the list and Europeans heavily at the bottom.

.

You're wrong. I spent the first 30 years of my life living in England and there was never the extent of the litter problem and waste dumping that there is here. There still isn't as I go back every year. It's not just the city either. Riding around Bright and the Alpine region every summer I'm disgusted at the litter at the side of the road-food cartons, energy drink cans and bottles, beer bottles etc. You will never see that in places such as the Lake District in the UK. It wasn't quite this bad when I first came here but Australians have turned into an uncaring slovenly bunch.

Saying that, on my first visit in 1987 I did a lot of walking in the Blue Mountains and was staggered to see halfway through a 14 hour return hike that hikers had left behind empty baked bean cans at a fire place from an overnight camp. They had carried in a full weighty can but wouldn't carry out a light empty one. Grubs. If Australians are at the top of a list it is certainly not one concerning care for their own environment.

I don't know which part of England you refer to but you don't need to venture far in the UK to find exactly the same littering problem.

[Hergest]

I don't know which part of England you refer to but you don't need to venture far in the UK to find exactly the same littering problem.

West Midlands. You won't see anything like we have around here in normal suburban Western Sydney in anywhere but the really roughest of run down, burnt out council estates in the UK. There is absolutely nowhere near the amount of glass smashed on paths there, nor household rubbish dumped on nature strips.

A car smash gets cleared up in the UK and the tow truck driver sweeps the road. Here the driver doesn't know what a broom is so all the glass remains to be brushed into the gutter by passing cars and bikes. If the whole front bumper of a car won't fit on the tow truck it's left at the side of the road.

Drive along a country road anywhere in Australia and look at the sun glinting off the acres of broken bottles at the side of the road. It seems to be an Australian pastime to throw a stubbie out of a moving car or truck.

I've ridden hundreds of thousands of kilometres all over Australia in the last 25 years and as many in the UK in the 30 years I lived there and the many visits I've made each year with my bike. There is nothing to compare with Australia in the scheme of things where littering by locals comes into it.

[Tequestra]

There is nothing to compare with Australia in the scheme of things where littering by locals comes into it.

Hello Mr/s Hergest and I hope that you are looking forward to a good weekend this first one in Autumn for the year, and I think that as the weather over here in Perth has been splendid all week, there ought to have been some correspondingly fine days already over your way, and it's not over yet, my friend.

Your conclusion brought to mind a story I read eleven years ago, about Bangkok* PATTANI, at https://www.stickmanbangkok.com/readers ... ent-again/

and BKKSteve (formerly my good online friend BBKSW), described the plastic bag waste usually left on Thai beaches, especially after national holidays. If you saw the ABC24/News tv story about the amount of plastic bottles and waste that is washing up on the shores of presumably Kuta Beach, Bali on the incoming overnight tides this week or last, that is what a popular Thai beach looks like after a holiday, but it is not the tide that washes it in in Thailand, I am most agrieved to inform you. It is the holiday-makers. Good Thai citizens, for whom I have the greatest respect and have been welcome to mention this to my Thai friends and it is acknowkedged, so this is not about bigotry or racism. It is too plain to see on International Labor Day (May 1st) for any semblance of plausible deniability by any one not totally blind or crazy.

It is just a cultural difference between different countries. There are good and bad points in all cultures, and where Thai culture, I guess probably from what I have read and heard that Asian cultures in general share some common differences with their Australian counterparts, and one fairly obvious difference is the more family-centric nature of modern Asian cultures, in comparison with the Westernised, independent, individual-centric Australian culture. I believe there are now specials on SBS tomorrow night of 'If You Are The One' called 'Meet the Parents' or something like that. (I never watch that stuff of course, but just saw the commercial, and I have no crush on Number Six at all, honest.)

The other part of Thai/Asian culture that BKKSW (Steve) mentions is the concentric familial geometry and how this can be transposed onto a geographical set of concentric rings, where The Home is the axle/hub of the social wheel, with other family members' and close friends' homes or perhaps a workplace or two are like the respected spokes in this wheel, and then there is a rim where the respect is not so strong, but it is still there. Outside that is the broader community which unfortunately, is not considered to rate very highly on the respect scale, and that is where the tubes get tossed away. I couldn't help that one rotation back to the origin, thank you OP.

Now, where am I going here? Possibly deep political or racial water, so please believe that I have a great respect for Thailand and Asia in general, and while I am not a great fan of forced multiculturalism, there are statistics around the place boasting of what a multicultural success this country is, and I am not denying it, and I remain neutral because I see positives as well as negatives.

And one of the negatives is that there used to be a wonderful campaign on the tv called

'KEEP AUSTRALIA BEAUTIFUL'

and I am oldenough to remember that one, and it is a different underlying message to the more recent campaign called

'CLEAN UP AUSTRALIA'

because the original puts that 'beautiful' thought in our minds, and the 'keep' tells us that Australia IS beautiful, and it is still, mostly, especially after I get off the plane in Perth after a few months.

Conversely, the second blurb puts the idea of HARD F'ING WORK in our heads, and brings to mind visions of bright yellow street streepers and stinky garbage trucks! EEEWWW! No one wants to get their hands dirty in this place anymore!

Keep Australia Beautiful asked us all with good reason to NOT litter, and NOT do anything unsightly to the landscape. Clean Up Australia just accuses us of being dirty pigs, and commands us to do punishment for it.

That's the problem. Nelson Mandela wrote something roughly along the lines of, 'No one is born evil' and it maybe true that with a more positive incentive, such as restoring our lovely, uplifting slogan 'Keep Australia Beautiful', once more, instead of twisting the knife in our guilty, inner consciences, then I would adapt Mandela's wisdom to the new arrival who came from an upbringing where that concentric ring of family and community/geography was foremost, and never knew that wonderful 'Keep Australia Beautiful' slogan before, and likes cycling to stop global warming or because there are ten billion bicycles in Beijing or whatever the reason, they are not into puncture repair kits, so when they get a flat, theyh stick the new one in and leave the old one for charity in case a poor person might have a repair kit and a flat tyre with too many patches on it ... okay, that crosses the boundary of logical assumptions. It is just normal to not care too much about something if you grow up being taught not to care too much about the rubbish out in the streets and there is no value on the new environment with the smell of eucalyts, so there is no real way to learn to respect it, except by fines, which are very difficult to enforce without expensive kinds of technology like CCTV, and then we all end up losing good privacy for the sake of litter bugs who take their shoes off before they walk into their own homes.

* sorry, I thought I remembered but it was my memory of Ban Phe, Rayong at the top of The Gulf that I had memorised back then. The different pictures paint the same words. I should have read it again before the link, but I already knew what the point of it was.