PICKING UP A ZILLION PIECES OF LITTER By JARED SIX I have a condition that I refer to as "Environmental OCD". (When it really bothers you to see litter on the ground.) But instead of getting upset…
JARED SIX I have a condition that I refer to as "Environmental OCD". (When it really bothers you to see litter on the ground.) But instead of getting upset about litter and complaining that someone ought to do something about it, I realize that I am "someone", and I am proud to be among those who are doing something about it.
For this project, I intend to pick up a zillion pieces of litter. (A "zillion" simply means "an extremely large number", but to be more specific, I intend to pick up as much litter as it takes to show that anyone can make a big difference.)Below is a series of pictures documenting a zillion pieces of litter that I picked up, from 1 to a zillion...
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I always bring bags/gloves/grabber with me whenever I visit the local national park. The rubbish is particularly bad in popular picnic spots, like the areas around Audley^1. The NPWS staff do a great job of keeping the parks clean, but they can't get everything. You'd be shocked how quickly you can fill a garbage bag on a short walk. The most common items by far are disposable coffee cups and cigarette packets (with nearly 100% imported packaging). Just make sure you're careful about snakes in summer. I once put my hand within striking distance when picking up a chip packet! Some of them are so well camouflaged.
1: https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/things-to-do/cafes-and-...
By Intermernet 2026-03-052:21 Thanks mate, glad I'm not alone doing this.
When my brother and I were young, my parents used to pay us 5 cents for every piece of rubbish we picked up on bushwalks. We got a few dollars to buy the things they would have invariably bought for us anyway, and the walking tracks became, for at least an hour or so, free from garbage.
By sl_convertible 2026-03-0519:02 I spent an enjoyable afternoon on Kailua beach snorkeling for garbage. I found a fishing pole, a complete snorkeling set, and bunches of other stuff. I just grabbed what I found, took it back to the beach, and dumped it in the garbage can. Very satisfying day.
By bananaboy 2026-03-0510:37 I do this with my son when we go for a walk through our nearby reserve! I'm trying to teach him about nature and keeping our environment clean and how we live alongside nature and we should take care of it. He's pretty invested now which is great - when we forget to bring a bag he always mentions it, or if we're walking somewhere else like on the way to kinder he'll point out some rubbish and say we should have brought a bag with us.
By throw567643u8 2026-03-0510:511 reply Audley and the Sutherland Shire was pristine growing up in the 80s. What's changed?
By ajxs 2026-03-0511:55 Audley isn't actually that bad. I just had it in my mind because I visited there recently. You'll still find bits of rubbish around the place, but the NPWS do a great job keeping it clean. Unfortunately any nature area that gets a lot of people will just inevitably get a lot of rubbish.
Littered across this website are countless gems and gotchas to make you think about the consequences of your purchases and actions. In particular the treasures he has found are quite surprising, 100 phones?! Just from looking for trash? The author is 47 I think and he's been doing stuff for 17 years. I have some of my own cool found trash collections too. The trash you find revels the personality of the place.
By somebehemoth 2026-03-051:181 reply 10 bibles for another example. I have seen bibles a lot of places, but never as trash. He describes his giant ashtray and the tale of the tens of thousands of other pieces of trash he picked up on his way to one million cigarette butts. I love this guy and his website. This is what we gray beards mean when we speak of the Internet of old.
I was surprised by the number of bibles too! I don't think I've ever seen one as litter (not counting those left in hotel rooms), but I've seen other kinds of religious literature like tracts, booklets, and watchtower magazines
That's the kind of thing that people like to hand out to people walking by. Many people, if handed a booklet they didn't actually want to read, will just toss it on the ground.
Those people are the worst. If you don't want something, don't take it. Don't make it everyone else's problem by littering.
As someone who has been pressured to take a book by random (mostly religious) people on a college campus, I wouldn't put the blame entirely on the person taking it.
If you choose to accept a book because you are too uncomfortable to say the word "no" then you should accept that it is your responsibility to dispose of the book appropriately.
Don't blame other people for your own bad behavior.
By rmunn 2026-03-0715:48 Best thing, if you accepted the book but realize within a few steps (maybe immediately) that you didn't actually want it, would be to walk back to the person handing it out and say "Changed my mind, don't actually want it, why don't you give it to someone else?" I know some people who hand out religious tracts or other such materials, and every one of them that I know personally would accept the item back with good grace. They'd rather give it to someone who will actually read it.
And if they're the kind of person who won't take it back with good grace? Place it on the ground right next to them, and walk away. Make it their responsibility to deal with it. (If you don't want to go out of your way to find a trash can: some public spaces make them easy to find, but others not so much).
By odo1242 2026-03-086:41 I didn’t say that I chose to accept the book and then threw it away. I said that I said no and the other person proceeded to drag out the interaction in a way that made everyone there uncomfortable.
By xnx 2026-03-0720:55 > 100 phones?! Just from looking for trash?
One scenario: Someone sets phone on top of car and drives off.
Be sure to check the second page: https://www.sixstepstobetterhealth.com/money.html
If every person picked up a piece of litter a day, the world would be exceptionally cleaner quite quickly.
I make a point to pick up any I see; you can carry dog waste bags if you're scared to touch things.
By Powdering7082 2026-03-052:101 reply This excerpt is well worth reading IMO
Back when I first started doing these clean-up projects, I started by just picking up litter that was in my own neighborhood. (Because that was where I lived, and because I had never been to a lot of the other neighborhoods in my area.) But I found that the more that I did this kind of work, the more that I wanted to do it, and I eventually found myself going beyond my own neighborhood and into neighborhoods that I had never been to before. (Including the ones that I had always heard were "bad neighborhoods".)
Then to make things more interesting, I started using the city bus system for the first time, and I started making it a point to go someplace new that I had never been to before whenever I picked up litter. And after going through a big stack of monthly bus passes, and walking down just about every street in the city (and doing it alone and without a phone) I want to say that not only has nothing bad ever happened to me, but I've encountered a lot of strangers who were almost "too nice" to me...
Because these clean-up projects involve a lot of walking and lugging around heavy stuff, it seems that no matter where I go, strangers will keep pulling over to offer me a ride. And because I do these projects even during extreme weather, the more intense the weather gets, the nicer people will become. (During the summer on really hot days, strangers will keep pulling over just to ask if I'm going to be OK working outside in the heat and if they can go and buy some cold water for me, and sometimes people will even try to give me an umbrella or an extra coat on days when it's raining or snowing.)
And there were times when I would pick up a penny that was in the middle of road or stuck in a crack in the sidewalk, and I guess that it would give strangers walking by the impression that I must need money, and sometimes people would actually pull out their wallet and start trying to give me money!
Strangers will also come up and thank me for what I'm doing, and sometimes they will end up talking to me for a long time, and I've ended up meeting a lot of friendly people this way.
I have been shown such a good side of people, that it simply wouldn't make sense for me to go back to being fearful of strangers and automatically imagining the worst-case scenarios about them. (Like I tended to do back when I didn't get out much and my view of the outside world was being shaped by watching the News.)
I don't doubt that there is crime in my area. (After all, "littering" itself is a crime, and there are MILLIONS of examples of this crime in plain sight where I live.)
But because I have been doing these clean-up projects, I've spent more time outside and less time looking at a screen in the past few years than I have at any other time in my life. And I know that what I am about to say will probably sound crazy to anyone who did the exact opposite of that and who spent the past few years locked in their homes and being bombarded all day long by the media with stories about crime, riots, racism, sickness, and war, but I honestly have never felt safer going outside than I do today.
I started picking up litter in my neighborhood because I wanted to help make the world a better place, and because it got me to get out more and start to base my view of the outside world on my actual experience in the outside world, the world is a much better place to me now, and that is the priceless treasure that I found while picking up a zillion pieces of litter.
By stevekemp 2026-03-054:29 > started using the city bus system for the first time, and I started making it a point to go someplace new
That's a fun thing to do when you move cities, or countries.
I spent several weekends riding every single tram line in Helsinki with my son. We'd pick a number we'd not yet done and ride each both ways to the terminus.
Get out at the end of the line and see what was nearby, have a cake, then come back home.
We had a map from the local transport company and we'd put stickers on the lines we'd done, and the last stops.
A good way to see different neighbourhoods in the same city.
By Intermernet 2026-03-052:241 reply Have a sharps disposal container, wear gloves, avoid the pointy bit, sanitise regularly.
By SoftTalker 2026-03-053:422 reply Seem to me if you're picking up litter possibly including needles/syringes you don't want the sort of complicated sharps containers you see at a medical clinic, where you have to operate some sort of trap door mechanism.
You want something simple, like a bucket, maybe with a funnel type opening, so that you can pick up the syringe with a grab tool and just drop it into the container with a minimum of handling or manuvering required.
Doctors and nurses who are practiced at handling sharps still stick themselves occasionally. You really don't want to touch them with your hands, even with gloved hands.
By jrmg 2026-03-053:59 Our local municipal waste authority recommends using laundry detergent liquid bottles as sharps containers.
Seems the FDA agrees they’re suitable: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/safely-using-sharps-need...
By true_religion 2026-03-054:06 You mean something like this? https://store.stericycle.com/8-2-quart-bd-sharps-container/3...
They’re pretty common in nursing homes in my area.
