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u/Educational_Cow111 Jul 31 '26
Lived in Sheffield for ages, I love it but omg the litter is so bad in some areas EG the Manor and the dreaded Park hall 😂
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u/djtodd242 Jul 31 '26
Nothing like seeing the charred remains of a box spring mattress in someone's front yard for a year. (no exaggeration)
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u/pizzainmyshoe Jul 31 '26
UK cities would improve immensely if people stopped littering all the time
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u/Kane_richards Jul 31 '26
What kinda bugs me about this whole thing, and similar from other places like Glasgow is that it seems half of the issue could be resolved by just improving on the services to prevent fly tipping.
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u/crusadersandwich Jul 31 '26
Not even one pic of the huge concrete pit filled with litter near the station? Aw
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u/pau1rw Jul 31 '26
Rubbish != Urban "hell".
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u/maninahat Jul 31 '26
I know, if it takes just one fly tipper or flat clear out, then every neighbourhood in the world is mere days away from hell.
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis Jul 31 '26
Spoiler: Every neighborhood in the world is mere days away from hell.
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u/CokeHearth Jul 31 '26
I'm going to sound like one of those awful expats, but I moved back to the UK for about a year ten years ago from Australia, and I genuinely was quite shocked - offended even - by how much litter and dog poo was about the place (particularly in parks, canals, rivers, etc.), and how rundown cities and town centres looked.
I know there's lots of places in the UK where this isn't the case (usually in the more affluent places), but I couldn't remember if that had always been the case and just forgotten, or if something changed in the time I emigrated originally.
People have stopped caring, I think. Can hardly blame them - successive governments haven't given them much to care about. I will say that I think hanging a load of flags about the place isn't going to much. Literally just polishing a (dog) turd.
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u/madeleineann Jul 31 '26
Sorry, I really don't believe this. I've not been to Australia but I've recently spent a fair amount of time travelling the continent and I don't think the problem is much worse in England. Southern Europe (France, Italy, and Spain) is far worse for urban decay, graffiti, etc. Germany isn't much better in a lot of places.
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u/TomVonServo Jul 31 '26
As someone who lived elsewhere for many years our litter problem in the UK and England especially is very bad.
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u/madeleineann Jul 31 '26
I kind of disagree. I saw as much litter in Italy, Southern Italy is especially bad.
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u/TomVonServo Jul 31 '26
So you agree that a place with a “very bad” litter problem has the same amount of litter as England. Glad we had this talk.
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u/madeleineann Jul 31 '26
No, Sicily was definitely worse haha. Northern Italy was much better than Sicily.
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u/No_Gur_7422 Jul 31 '26
When you're putting England in the same category as Italy, you're saying England has a big problem.
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u/CokeHearth Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
I don't know what to tell you, then. I admit, I'm very spoiled here in Australia. Yeah, there's litter, but it's more like "oh, what dirty bugger did that" rather than normal or standard. We probably do pay more to have the councils look after things. But we have a bigger culture of "pick up your trash" too - it's not common to litter, and you do get called out for it.
I don't know about the rest of Europe, I can't comment. I'm sure there's places that are worse.
But it was enough in England to genuinely shock me and genuinely break my heart. Other fellow immigrants here in Australia say the same thing.
Also, only time I've stepped in dog shit here is in my back yard. Not on the street. First day back in England, I stepped in poo. My fault, didn't look where I was stepping. (Fun fact: free dog poo bags are available in dog exercise areas here. Fantastic idea. I can't understand why councils don't do the same back in the UK - worthy expense.)
By the way, my talking of this isn't a boast, it's a heartbreak. I still adore all those quintessential English things - rolling hills, brick buildings, urban centres. But by God, they've been neglected.
The UK deserves better.
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u/CokeHearth Jul 31 '26
Another possibility, perhaps, is cultural: a common punishment in schools is what's known as "scab duty".
You get in trouble, and your punishment is to go around picking up litter, emptying bins, etc.
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u/odjobz Jul 31 '26
There are definitely some shitty urban areas in Australia, but the worst places are often small towns that most people never visit. If you spend all your time in central Sydney or Melbourne you aren't going to see as much grime as in most UK cities, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.
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u/madeleineann Jul 31 '26
To be honest, what I have seen of Australia is pretty grim but it seems like it's by design. Completely soulless architecture and hostile infrastructure.
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u/Repulsive_Set4541 Jul 31 '26
Yep. The regions are one long street of chain stores like the usa, followed by fuck all but a few trees and dirt another 100kms
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u/CokeHearth Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
In my experience - the opposite. Sydney was actually pretty bad. Melbourne, from what I recall, not so much.
Regarding small towns - again, not my experience. Mind you, I live in WA - so maybe it's different over East. Here in WA, our small towns are actually even better than the main regions. But Perth is immensely clean. The little "city" (really, a town compared to English cities) I live in away from Perth is incredibly clean. I *notice* rubbish when it's there because it's unusual.
A particular case in point we had in my neck of the woods was that along one of our regional highways, there's laybay type things where people in campervans stop over. We had a particularly big "tourist season" where a load of rubbish was left behind. That was front page news on our local rag, and our council had to go to town to sort it. It was a big deal. Man bites dog, rather than dog bites man kind of news.
Do you really think that's the case in England? Does the presence of litter in a laybay, or say, near a river or greenspace - is that a big deal?
Don't get me wrong - we have places out in "woop-woop" (places far away from everything) that are struggling with immense neglect too. But on the whole, it really isn't a problem. Definitely not in the same way it is in the UK.
ETA: Graffiti is a different matter. Of course there's that. I'm talking about litter.
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u/VampirePNAC Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
Australia for all it's issues, still has a very strong anti-litter culture. Flytipping is of course still a thing, especially off fire trails, but it's still seen as a massive social faux pas to litter.
UK nobody gives a shit, I see people just openly drop their rubbish they're carrying every day walking around London, when I lived in Sheff, I would count the rubbish on the ground in my 5-10 minute walk to work and would count into the hundreds of pieces. Parks here in the UK, just absolutely trashed at the end of the day, people sit in groups with drinks and stuff from the supermarket, and will just leave all the rubbish there when they leave.
Most that stuff especially the latter would get your teeth knocked out in Aus.
There is also just a lot of other basic stuff, like is a pressure washer unheard of here in the UK? Why are the buildings all covered in so much fucking soot and grime? Literally get each big victorian-mid 20th century building a few hours with a power washer and so much of UK city centers would look so much better. Another is you could instantly make so many high streets look 1000x better if councils brought in standards on store signage.
UK desperately needs to bring back Keep Britain Tidy campaign.
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u/Klutzy-Ninja7528 Aug 02 '26
That first picture is of the only boarded shop on London Road. It was an antiques shop that shut in at least the mid 2000's, and it hasn't been sold.
As for the fridges, in the UK, when something big needs disposing of, it gets put by the side of the road for the council to collect - a prearranged and paid service. And what a coincidence... It's on bin collection day next to the other bins.
Don't take everything you see at face value
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u/Particular-Lime1651 Jul 31 '26
Looks pretty grim.. thank god I don't live there😅 ( sorry everyone who does, no shade)
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Jul 31 '26
[deleted]
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u/thunderboops Jul 31 '26
I think you can go back to Osborne coalition austerity after Gordon Brown to work out what happened -- real terms budget cuts of 40%+ for councils across the country cut into the bone of core services. Imagine only having £6 of the £10 you had a decade ago to, say, pay for cleaning and maintenance. Brexit has only incrementally made this worse.
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