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Comment by koube | Hacker News Reader

I don't think corporations are solely to blame. In Japan they use a lot of plastic packaging[0], and have a lack of public rubbish bins[1], yet they don't litter[2]. Can we not hold customers accountable as well for not disposing of their garbage properly, as they do in Japan?

[0]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xd573w/japans-excessive-p...

[1]: https://jpninfo.com/54373

[2]: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/why-japanese-dont-lit...

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They also fine you up to $5,000 and give you community service if you litter.

Same goes for Singapore. Crime to littler and also the culture there values cleanliness of the city. When I was there I almost never saw trash on the ground, ever. I once saw a plastic cup get blown off some lady's table and the next person who was working on the street who saw it picked it up and tossed it in the trash bin. Public trash bins are everywhere. Absolutely a world-class city in every sense of it.

Jetlagged in Tokyo one morning (maybe 4:30 AM local), I watched a lady open her eatery.

She cleaned and readied everything inside, swept the front curb of her shop, then proceeded to perfectly sweep the ~10' wide sidewalk in front of her place to the street's edge.

How Tokyo lives with its hyperdensity suddenly made sense.

From an individual's point of view: they also fine you up to $5,000 and give you community service if you get caught littering.

Good thing in Japan, even if one or two people litter, there's at least 100 other fine people who will be there to pick up after you happily without even thinking about it.

Man I'd love that here in the US

I would pay at least $5 per item never to see Styrofoam packaging again. But this is impossible because the market is incapable of offering me this sort of thing. Putting it on consumers is unfair.

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