At what point does it become my trash (see details)

Yes – it has become your trash. (Are we speaking metaphorically or literally here?)

I have been faced with this very dilemma on several occasions. As a general rule, if I care enough to pick it up (and I do), then I care enough to bring it to a happy conclusion. It has become my problem to solve.

Yes, you have inserted yourself into the clean-up mechanism, it’s now your litter if you leave it.

Consider three scenarios:

1) Someone sees it, but does nothing about it
2) Someone does as above, carrying it for a good 45 minutes before giving up.
3) Someone picks it up only because he sees a trash can a few paces ahead, but wouldn’t have touched it otherwise.

Are numbers 1 and 3 more ethical than number 2?

I’m not sure. But….in #2, you could simply be dropping it in a place that is less-likely to be picked up by someone else. I mean, you saw it where it was and decided to pick it up. But do you really know that you would have picked it up if it had been where you are currently dropping it? You’ve inserted yourself into the situation as @zenvelo noted.

@tom_g Wouldn’t having inserted myself in the situation carry its own ethical merit, a merit that I simply forfeit when I put the cup back down?

I don’t know. :)

I don’t know either :)

All are “ethical;” number 2 is a situation where inconvenience has delayed a desirable outcome. If the item were an injured child (rather than a piece of trash), and you were seeking the nearest medical attention, your inconvenience would not factor into this, I’m guessing.

Technically I think of you simply carry the trash to a new location and then leave it all you have really done is relocate the trash. Now, if said trash was say a plastic six pac holder on a beach where sea life or other wildlife could potentially become entangled in it and you relocate it to a “safer” space like a vacant parking lot, well then, maybe you have made an ethical difference. lol

When it’s spam? ;-}
Bad litter…rubbish strewn along the street. Good litter…cute puppies.

A discarded paper cup means that the person who owned the cup has given up ownership of it. Once the cup hits the sidewalk, then it automatically belongs to whoever is responsible for that part of the sidewalk. If the person responsible for the sidewalk doesn’t clean it up, he/she would be fined by the city, just like if you don’t shovel your snow from your sidewalk. If someone slips and falls from the snow you didn’t clean, you get sued, not the city. So if you were to pick up the cup, you would not be littering, you would be stealing since the cup has never and will never belong to you unless the original owner handed it to you directly.

I think that when you picked it up, you became its owner, insofar as one can “own” anything, which I define loosely as the right to use, move, destroy, combine, or control access to an object. You assumed responsibility for it at that point, and that included responsibility for its disposal.

Suppose the object were not refuse. Suppose it were, let’s say, a ten-dollar bill. Between the time that you picked up the cup and the time that you deposited it in a waste receptacle, what difference is there between it and the money?

Now suppose it’s neither a discarded paper cup nor legal tender but the shoe of a small child whom you can see or at least hear being carried some way ahead of you. You pick up the shoe with the intent to find its rightful owner and and return it. Between the time that you picked it up and the time that you caught up with the child’s parent, what difference is there?

Is your intentionality in the object, or is it only in you? And does it affect the state of the object while you control its location?

Stealing… littering… abandoning property… etc.

I don’t care what kind of a scofflaw you are. You are OK in my book!
Thanks for making the effort!

Or, to take @Jeruba‘s point further, what if it’s actually a small child? If you find it on the sidewalk, carry it some distance and set it down again, is this a zero-sum situation?

I think if you pick it up, it’s your responsibility. Trash has a life beyond our interaction with it.

The more I think about it, the more one has an obligation to pick up the litter if it is possible to carry it to a disposal place without being an undue burden. But carrying paper cup is not an undue burden, so it is no only an obligation to pick it up, but to not discard except in a proper place.

That’s what I have down when backpacking and come across litter. Pick it up and put with whatever trash I am packing out of the wilderness. It’s what my son, who is a Leave No Trace trainer, would tell you to do.

Well…once in my wild youth I picked up a snake on the beach and dropped it in a convertible that was the vehicle of a half dozen beach combing nuns on a remote Northern CA. beach.
Now, did I save an unsuspecting person from falling off a cliff when stepping on the snake, or, did I plummet 6 nuns to their death when the snake emerged from under the seats on the cliffs on CA. Hwy. 101? lol

I shall never know. lol

Or—did you set a snake on the path to salvation, @Coloma, by sending it to do penance for the apple episode?

^^^^ Haha..I like that train of thought, hmmm…very good! :-)

I had that problem before. I decided to make up for ditching it with a future action. I felt guilty about accessing other people’s containers at first, but that went away. When I walked through neighborhoods on trash day, and the containers are right there at the sidewalk, I would pick up trash along the way, and put it into the first can I see, continue on, and do the same, until I got to a point where I could no longer see any can ahead. I did lots of walking when I was still able. I’ve improved a number of neighborhoods a few tons’ worth over the years. Of course, I’d have never reached a destination if I picked up every scrap I saw, but I got the most obvious.

Thanks for all the interesting takes on the question. I’ve continued to mull it over myself, and here’s how it feels to me:

It’s pretty clear that the person who bought the drink engaged their responsibility for the proper disposal of the cup. They were the direct beneficiary of the service of that cup; it’s now out there in the world solely because he treated himself to a drink. This person presumably compensated the guy at the 7-Eleven for the material costs of the drink and cup, but there is another cost involved: the cost in effort of properly disposing of the cup. This person has reneged on paying that cost by dropping the cup on the ground, and so leaving someone else to pay that part of the cost of his drink.

Along I come. I have in no way benefited from that cup or the drink it once contained, so I have no debt to pay here. Its presence there is an affront to my sensibilities, but the easiest solution to that problem is to just keep on walking. Or…I could undertake to pay that cost in effort that this other person incurred. In picking up that cup, I make no promises whatsoever. There is no contract with any other party to which I’m agreeing. I don’t assume the debt, I just volunteer to defray the cost.

If at some point I decide that the effort I’ve expended has become too burdensome, the debt still isn’t mine. In putting it back down, I’m simply cutting my losses, not reneging on a debt.

@thorninmud Of all people, I am surprised that you would reduce this to a financial transaction!

Costs incurred by others because you drop the cup on the ground: The owners of the property/adjacent property now have to pick up trash that wouldn’t be there if you hadn’t brought it there. Everyone who walks by it has to see a dirty street. Or else the city has to pay (in time, at the very least) to dispose of it properly.

Benefits you gain by disposing of the cup properly: The town/region you live in is a cleaner, tidier place. And you haven’t harmed anyone by leaving trash on/near their property.

These should be added to your cost/benefit analysis. I don’t see why the fact that you didn’t drink the coffee factors into your interaction with it as trash. And there’s no question that the buyer of the coffee should have disposed of it properly. That has nothing to do with your involvement.

An added thought, if you are seen leaving it on the ground by a cop, you will be the one getting the ticket for littering, even though it wasn’t yours to begin with. It won’t matter how it came into your possession, only what you did with it in the end.

@glacial Not a financial transaction, no. I’m using “debt” and “cost” in their larger sense: as obligation. I’m saying that the cup lying there represents a debt unpaid. Isn’t that how it looks to someone seeing it lying there? Someone failed to assume the whole cost (in terms of obligation) of that cup of coffee.

Would you say that anyone passing by that cup is ethically obliged to pick it up and dispose of it? Most people here seem to think that just passing it by is an ethically neutral act. If I pick it up at all, it’s because I subscribe to the values you describe, and want to make my town a cleaner, tidier place. The people who’ve walked right by it may kind of want that too, but not enough to take any action.

If I move the cup, have I worsened the situation? Maybe. Or I may have made it somewhat better. That’s hard to know. Maybe I conceal it better when I put it down. What if I’d never picked it up at all, but had nudged it up under a bush so that it wouldn’t be in open view? Is that materially different from picking it up and carrying it 45 minutes, then putting it under a bush? Isn’t carting the cup off to a landfill just a way of transferring the problem to a less conspicuous spot?

I absolutely agree, by the way, that the best solution is to make sure it ends up in a trash can. I’ve carried lots of other people’s trash very long distances, and can’t recall ever having put any back down. But this simple problem seems to open lots of interesting questions that aren’t easily disposed of.

@thorninmud I think the ideal would be for people to pick up and properly dispose of trash they happen to come across. As @zenvelo said, this is a pretty common practice when hiking in wilderness environments. In a city setting, matters are complicated not only by how dirty the items might be, but also by sheer volume. So I can understand not stopping to pick up every piece of garbage one encounters. But having picked up a piece of garbage – then I think one assumes responsibility for it, as many others here have said. Even though it might be an energy-neutral act, it’s not an ethically neutral act to carry a piece of garbage and leave it in a new location. Because from the perspective of those at the new location, you’ve now created a problem that didn’t exist before. I don’t think that can be justified by saying “But I removed a problem from those at the old location”.

But hey, that’s just my opinion.

(@ no one in particular) I think that what often goes on in people’s minds when they see a piece of litter goes something like this: “What kind of low-life just drops a coffee cup when they’re finished with it?” The act of picking it up isn’t just from a desire to have things neat; there’s also an element in there of proving ourselves to be the kind of person that the other jerk failed to be. More than that, really, because we were under no obligation, like he was. There’s a satisfaction (tinged with righteous indignation) in being the better person.

I’m sympathetic with the notion of assuming responsibility because I know that feeling, but I wonder if it doesn’t come largely from the fact that if you don’t see the project through to its stated end, then you lose that glow of superiority. Your mission of demonstrating responsibility incarnate has failed. I think that maybe we’re condemned more by the realization of our own ordinariness than by a failure to meet a real responsibility.

So the question becomes, “Is altruism really motivated by egotism and self-ishness?”

@janbb I’m not sure it’s genuinely altruism if it consists of cleaning up your own neighbourhood.

@glacial For the sake of the argument, let’s say it’s a neighborhood you have never frequented before.

@janbb Well… I think that makes my point even more clear. It’s still a case of dumping one’s problem on someone who doesn’t deserve it.

A spiritual exercise:

Start picking up litter when one can and dispose of it, but all with a goal of no one knowing what you are doing. And no telling anyone, even on Fluther!

What makes litter so irksome is that accompanying sense of someone not having done what they were supposed to do, right? We don’t react with the same indignation when we see a fallen branch lying alongside the sidewalk. I’m not even sure that litter is inherently uglier than “natural” clutter. We seem to learn that it’s uglier, because it represents a failed obligation. It’s the indignation that makes it ugly.

I do think that it’s possible to simply see a piece of litter and, without engaging in an indictment of the jerk who dropped it, simply reach down and pick it up just out of wanting to set things right. But I think that it’s at least as likely that there will be a judgment of the litterer, and once that happens I think it’s a given that you will want to prove yourself superior.

I guess we react very differently to litter, @thorninmud. My interaction with it is not about “what the other guy did” or about how superior I feel. I might feel some indignation that someone littered, but that’s not what drives me to pick it up. And even if it were – what does that have to do with what I choose to do with it now that I have it? If I’ve picked up a piece of trash, I am now preoccupied with the trash in my hand, not its previous owner. Its destiny now depends on me, not anyone else.

And yes, litter is different, uglier than a fallen branch. The fallen branch will decompose by feeding a gazillion organisms that will enrich the soil in the process, likely over a season or two. Some guy’s discarded cup will not do that – or at least it will do it over a substantially longer period, and release toxins while doing so.

@glacial Then you’re among the people I was talking about when I said that “it’s possible to simply see a piece of litter and, without engaging in an indictment of the jerk who dropped it, simply reach down and pick it up just out of wanting to set things right.”

@thorninmud You know it is not your trash, it is only to an onlooker that it would look like it is yours. You did your bes anyway, if you are too far away from a recylcing can or a trash can.