More than Half of Americans Do Nothing About Ecology

People are not willing to put up with litter louts anymore. Meetville.com (dating app to find the right person) released a poll between 4/25/14 and 8/25/14 to measure public views on the act of littering.

The poll asked people to respond to the question: “Do you reprove/rebuke people when you see them litter?”, and yielded the following results: “Yes” - 58% “No” - 42%.

Jeremy Paxman, the BBC Newsnight presenter, considers litter a nasty side effect of our convenience-oriented culture. “The presence of litter in a community takes a toll on quality of life, property values, and housing prices. However, many people simply don't think they're doing anything wrong. They have come to expect that someone else will clean up after them.” Mr Paxman believes that confronting people who drop litter and showing them that the rest of society does indeed frown on it, is vital when trying to change perceptions and behavior in the long-term.

Participants numbered 80, 380. From the USA - 50%, from Canada - 4%, from Britain - 11%, from Australia - 6% and from other countries - 29%.

According to Alex Cusper, Meetville service analyst, litter is typically viewed as local problem. “The U.S. spends 11.5 billion dollars on litter clean up every year. And such clean up projects are operating in many countries. Littering is not just a problem in America, but around the world,” Alex points out.

Meetville, a leading mobile dating service, regularly conducts research among its users. Millions of people from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia answer hundreds of questions every month. You can find the results of the poll here. If you are interested in research on a particular topic, please contact us. Any reprint of the material should be followed by clickable links to the survey.