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Comment by Noxmiles | Hacker News Reader

As a german I am a bit shocked to see, that Germany is often in the top 5 of most produced plastic at all and per capita. Still - I don't see much of it in the streets or elsewhere.

Thanks for the link. Great article.

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That could also be a cultural thing. Some cultures, like German and Japanese, have stricter etiquette and manners around things like cleanliness and order. In my experience Germans are also not shy in telling you when you've violated etiquette either, which is very different from in the US where people avoid confrontation.

The reason why in the US is because you have a very real chance of getting shanked or violently attacked if you do 'notify a violator' in public.

That's not true.

Germany is relatively clean, and Switzerland and Japan. That's generally due to a lower overall prevalence of littering and actually having effective government-run pickups. But stray from places that aren't picked up regularly and you'll see it. I've seen it everywhere I have been, including all over southern Germany. It's like a rule of the universe. Anywhere people go, they bring food with them, and the wrappers and bottles end up on the ground, in the bushes, in the streams. Single-use plastic for goodies--food, drink, cigarettes, etc--is the #1 kind of litter. Germany is no better than anywhere for cigarette butts, by the way. And cigarette butts are actually made out of plastic, for the most part.

Source: been picking up garbage all over the world for years.

Maybe because quite a lot of plastic gets sent to asia? https://www.dw.com/en/german-plastic-floods-southeast-asia/a...

Disneyworld also has very clean streets. I wouldn't hold it up as a model of sustainability, though.

I don't mean to dig at our German friends, only to make the point that pollution is much more than what we can see, as civilians, just walking and driving around.

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