So much easier if it was causation

When I was younger I remember being at school and had messages like, keep it green and be a tidy kiwi. 

These days those same messages are being used but others that have seeped in are keep nz beautiful (a stolen phrase from Max clothing), reduce-reuse-recycle  (used at the latter end of my school years).

I am sure that there are quite a few of us out there that make a consciencely effort to at least not litter or recycle. But the matter of fact is that it really is 1 rotten apple spoils the lot. If 10% of the population litter then that is 10% too much. It is much easier to destroy than build. 

What amazes me is that New Zealand wants to be seen as this clean green environment but doesn't have big laws against doing the opposite of this. If you look at Singapore, there are heavy fines for spitting (I think like $500), chewing gum is banned (I'm totally for this), and littering is a huge fine too.

We have places like Wellington and Waitakere where rubbish bags need to be purchased so we can throw out our rubbish. My question is...why aren't wheelie bins used? Both require the use of a big truck to come and take our rubbish away but wheelie bins don't require loads and loads of plastic bags to be produced (isn't reduce one of the big R's?). Sure they could be biodegradable recycled bags but is recycle/reuse better than reduce?

It is easy to ignore a big faceless company (or city council) when they do things that in essence litter our country. But it is much harder to ignore it when people do this. I myself was a non-conscience litterer several years back and I was very embarrassed when a very good friend told me off about it one day, and I thank him very much for doing so. I now very consciencely try not to litter. 

The people that I really want to focus on is actually smokers. These people in my opinion are the biggest litterers in our society. How many times have you seen one of these people flick their cigarette butt into the gutter, the road, out of their cars...everywhere. Sure the butts are quite small but how many times do they do this per day. If they can consciencely do this, what about normal litter? I think that a huge portion of litterers are smokers. Could we ever prove this? I don't think so, smokers being litterers is only a correlation, it isn't causation because we all know that non-smokers litter as well. 

I'm just sick of seeing people litter....consciencely too!