I live in India. As far as I know, littering is not much of a problem in other countries, but India has always been a place where even the adults teach their children: "Beta, yahin pe phek do, sabhi karte hain". (Go ahead and throw it here, as everyone else does it too.)
It has often been the case that a person has just thrown an empty plastic packet of chips on to the road, and I asked them to pick it up and throw it into a nearby dustbin. Most often, I have been replied to with an open refusal, or an angry face. In fact, the people considered it an insult to them when I asked them to the above-mentioned. They feel as if the road belongs to each and everyone of them, as they "pay taxes on time", and they treat it as their dustbin/toilet/road. (As in, people even urinate on it.)
I am not insulting anyone here, but I want to know how I can get people to at least pick up their own trash.
What should I say to them so that they don't take offense, but still do what's needed? I'm doing this as I want a cleaner city. The city I live in, Bengaluru/Bangalore used to be known as the Garden City, but now, the newspapers depict it as The Garbage City. There's trash lining every road, and the cows eat out of trash piles (yes, we still have cows on our roads). There aren't any bins for huge road stretches, so even a person who actually cared can't do anything. There's an unhygienic environment everywhere, and nobody cares about it, except when it comes to complaining about the government not doing its job properly, when in reality, it is they who dirty it in the first place.
What I've already tried:
- Picked up the trash and put it into a bin myself
- Asked them if they dropped something valuable
- Pushed it back into their hand, and shamed them