Why do we love to litter so much?

On a July afternoon, a young man in a white shirt, carrying a piece of white tissue paper, was on his way to catch the local bus in the Banglamotor area of the capital. After walking a while, he did the inevitable — wiped his forehead with the tissue and dropped it on the pavement. 

I approached him with a question: Instead of looking for a trash can or keeping it inside your pocket, why did you drop it on the walkway? He seemed offended, but responded, "Show me one trash can here. I cannot just keep filling up my pockets with tissues and food packets. I have to get to work." 

Indeed, from Sonargaon road to Banglamotor and along Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue, there were no trash cans in sight. But even when there are trash cans, how many of us actually use them? Are our tendencies of littering just a systemic problem, or is the problem rooted in our behaviour? 

"Waste is an inevitable part of human life. But whether I am a responsible consumer, or  whether I am throwing away trash in a proper way are the things to be considered. And 'I didn't get a trash can and that's why I dumped it on the walkway' is just a nasty excuse for irresponsibility," opined Dr Adil Mohammad Khan, urban planner and a member of the Bangladesh Institute of Planners (BIP). 

Old habits die hard 

Last December, I went to my ancestral home in the southern region of Bangladesh after 15 years. I was surprised to find that simple one-storey village homes with tin roofs had turned into five-storey concrete buildings. The beautiful, open courtyard in the centre had also been engulfed by the concrete walls. The buildings were stunning, with glistening white ceramic tiles covering its floor, and huge windows. 

But the kitchen and bathroom were a mess. 

And no matter how expensive the tiles or the upholsteries were or how expensive the interior was, my family still ate on the bed or sofa where the upholstery had turmeric stains from daal or curry. 

"Who will clean all of this every day? We had mud floors before, the toilet was outside, detached from the main home. We cleaned it twice or thrice a month. We bathed in the adjacent pond," said my aunt. 

"Now we don't have to go outside to the toilet or for bathing. However, we are still not accustomed to the fact that when the toilet is inside the residence, we need to clean it more often," she added. 

Their waste management system was rudimentary: a huge ditch adjacent to the home was where they threw household waste, including vegetable peel, diapers, sanitary napkins, broken crockeries and so on. During monsoon, this ditch gets clogged with water and creates an unbearable odour.   

Jackie Cornwall, an English author who is currently based in Spain, provides an explanation for this. She is writing a book about culture and cleanliness and in a Quora post, she shared that perceptions of what it means to be clean vary enormously across cultures.

"For example, when East Pakistani immigrants (now Bangladesh) moved in significant numbers to the UK in the 1970s, their British neighbours found them dirty because they didn't look after the outdoor parts of their homes. Gardens were left untended and dumped items were left to moulder outside. The houses were usually pristine indoors and many Pakistanis (now Bangladeshi) were critical of their British neighbours for keeping animals indoors and keeping their shoes indoors."

Jackie refers to the clean and well-curated surroundings as "cognitive architecture", which is "not shared equally by everyone."

According to her, the reason behind this is, "When women are not encouraged to go out of doors, they may devote their energies to keeping their homes clean and leave the outdoors to take care of itself. Men in such cultures may consider cleaning up to be beneath their dignity. The result can sometimes be a fair degree of squalor."

She also pointed out that poverty, a lack of education, combined with a culture which doesn't put much emphasis on neat and clean streets, to be the primary reasons for these habits. 

A two-pronged approach 

Dr Adil's solution to changing these habits is "well-intentioned" city planning. 

"If the city authorities really wanted the people to be responsible with their trash, they would have planned it that way. Initiating monetary or societal punishment for trash dumping, building user-friendly trash cans that are accessible to the city dwellers, and also maintaining those — there are ways to work on this," he noted. 

"Unfortunately the authorities themselves are not aware of these things. Visit any of the political programmes or meetings, you will find plastic plates, cutlery and cups scattered all around. What do you expect from them?" he further said.

He mentioned Rwanda, an African country that has been able to build the cleanest city in the continent. In 2018, UN Environment Programme Head Eric Solheim referred to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda,  as the 'cleanest city on the planet', both in terms of lack of street litter and green initiatives.

But these initiatives began in 2008, when Kigali first banned single-use plastic bags. In 2009, the city authorities, realising that the city had grown haphazardly in certain sectors, decided to demolish poorly built and poorly serviced slums and unauthorised construction to make way for new roads and better housing. 

On the last Saturday of every month, the Kigalians observe 'Umuganda' — a community self-help and cooperation practice. It is a part of Rwandan tradition where the community members call upon their family, friends, and neighbours to assist them in cleaning areas of the city, picking up every bit of trash lying around. 

During Umuganda, shops in the city remain shut, and cars are off the roads to facilitate the drive. Kigali has made participation in Umuganda mandatory, and non-participants could be fined.

While the urban planners of Bangladesh emphasise on the necessity of better city planning and law enforcement, psychologists explain the tendency of littering as a personality trait, which can be improved with proper behaviour change campaigns.  

"The way a person behaves when on one is watching them is that person's honest self, the real personality. And that builds from childhood, through the things the person experiences, observes and practises. If you let a child litter on the road, they will eventually continue doing this when they grow up," explained Syed Tanveer Rahman, associate professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Dhaka.

According to Tanveer, the behavioural pattern development or someone's personality depends on two factors: the environment or the culture and what the person acquires from their ancestors. 

And both these things develop our morality, which has a significant impact on our behaviour. 

"Like any Social and Behavioral Change Communication (SBCC) campaign, this would take all-out engagement and continuous efforts from government and non-government agencies to enlighten people and create mass awareness, like waste management lessons in school education, organising cleaning campaigns for everyone in the community, implementing policies and laws, etc.," he suggested.