I used to work for the Woodland Trust and believe that this is the right thing to do. Bins in woodlands do not get emptied often and will often overflow and attract unwanted pests like rats. Rats will also eat the eggs of ground nesting birds and cause other environmental issues.

If they are selling food on site then the food vendor should have a bin that their customers can use inside their cabin/cafe and dispose of the waste daily as part of the service.

Gentrified forest is the most cursed phrase I heard in a minute.

This is the reason given in Australia by Parks Victoria

LEAVE NO TRACE

Advocate for minimal-impact practices wherever you go. Many people are surprised to find no bins in national parks. Waste attracts native animals, which can change their natural behaviour and harm both natural and cultural sites, as well as your personal belongings.

Always bring rubbish bags (and one for your neighbour) and take all your rubbish home. Help educate others about the importance of leaving the park pristine, minimising your impact on the delicate balance of the ecosystem.

please clean up after yourself.

The only way this will work is if humans behave in ways that no human has ever humaned

I'd give this some odds of reducing trash pollution. It can seem frustrating, but it MAY change people's behavior in a way that reduces litter. Behavioral economics can be counterintuitive.

EDIT: What matters is the result. If this makes more people litter, they should probably bring back the bins. If this reduces litter, they should keep it this way, regardless of how inconvenient or "stupid" you the reader find it.

...huh? They want to cut down on litter by removing the convenient locations for people to dispose their would-be litter?

Fuck there are some incredibly fucking stupid people in charge of places right now...

It mildly infuriates me that you can't see the logic in taking your rubbish with you when you leave.

Weird, when Japan does it everyone praises them. I guess us western societies are just too trashy to clean up after ourselves.

Wait, so there are bins inside and they don't want bins outside because it's a wildlife area?

Sounds like OP's a little lazy, this is a very understandable change

Sounds to me like they just dont want to empty the bins any more. I suspect after a few months of picking rubbish off the floor, the bins will be back.

Or not and everyone will complain and stop going.

"We don't have enough funds to make the guys do that route, what do we do? what did you say Shannon? masquerade it as taking care of the environment? that's fantastic"

One problem with outside bins is that the wildlife is naturally drawn to them and the contents can be damaging to them as well as desensitising animals to people, plus things like squirrels and birds will pull rubbish out of the bins and spread it around.

Growing up in the 60s, we saw anti-littering commercials, called PSAs (Public Service Announcements),on TV every day. Ask any older American what they remember about those PSAs, and they will say "The crying Indian."

Today, they never show those anymore, and i am seeing young people littering as a result. I was recently in a fast food lot, and saw a car pull in, a young guy about 20 get out, and throw a bunch old fast food trash into the bushes, then walk into the restaurant. He passed a trash can next to the door on his way in, where he could have tossed his trash, but he just tossed it in the bushes instead.

I collected up the trash, and set it on the hood of his fancy hot rod.

I've seen plenty of similar examples in the last few years, because young people dont see those PSAs telling them not to, and even their parents havent been educated to teach them.

The places with the fewest places to deposit one's trash are always the ones with the most litter. Always.

If someone wants another person to adapt a behavior, from a purely practical standpoint, that person must make the other person's job easier or it will simply not work to get them to adapt. If this wasn't a forest (such as it is, it being the UK), the only proper thing to do would be to dump as much trash there as possible while demanding the bins back until they get the message and cave in. I could write a whole book here about how the packaging industry paid lobbyists and PR firms to put the blame on consumers for the useless crap they make existing in the first place, and shaming them into keeping it out of sight and thus out of mind. I won't. But it's a tale vile enough that it convinced me that there's a time and a place for littering as protest. The woods aren't the place.

Besides, there ARE receptacles that are critter resistant. This is an absolute cop out, and seeing how landscaped the area is, a couple of bins would hardly scar the landscape. This is pure crap. I looked the place up, and it's NOT the kind of place where you deny people trash receptacles, nor is it the kind of place you can credibly base your argument on "we don't want animals to get used to people". Good lord, what a bunch of idiocy.

Pack in, Pack out.

I was walkin' through the forest

And a sign said they removed the bins to produce less rubbish

"We kindly ask all visitors to take their litter home!"

Man, what do I look like, a garbage bin?

I threw it on the ground!

We survive that way in Japan with almost no bins. Of course the odd person litters, but most don't; if we can pack it in, we can pack it out. Now, if there were no bin inside the cafe, that would be idiotic.

This has been happening in New Zealand for a while. The theory seems to be that bins attract more litter and are a hazard to wildlife.

I was sceptical at first but it actually seems to work.

Perturbs me that they are selling food though. Surely yhe food sellers should have bins for which they are responsible in their immediate vicinity.

"To support our commitment to reducing the number of covid cases, we have elected to discontinue counting them. We kindly ask all infected to kindly die at home."

That's not how human behavior works...

Someone thinks they're very clever and they aren't.

This is basically ubiquitous on many public lands, specifically here in the US. The term is "carry in, carry out." Bins accumulate trash (obviously) which in turn is an attractant for rodents, bears, raccoons, etc. which causes its own problems. Wild animals should not be artificially fed by human trash. Trash can also be blown out of cans, or scattered by animals. Overall, especially for low traffic environments, the best plan is to have people take all their trash out with them.

TL;DR: Pack out your trash.

See how much garbage you can stack on/wedge into the sign before they put bins back there.

Think it's a mentality as well.

Had a friend in high school and after the drive in we went to, I cleaned up my trash and threw it away. My friend said "why are you doing that, they pay people to do that" and proceeded to leave her trash.

Didn't stay friends, but who the f thinks that way?

Entitled Amerikkkans.... that's who.

Pick up your own trash.

Not other people's trash.

YOUR OWN.

Why can’t they have a dumpster with lid?

People are just going to litter if they didn’t plan ahead to bring a trash bag.

I fully support the choice to remove the bins. I visited a beauty spot in Scotland recently that has a coffee van in the carpark. The young couple I took there went to add their empty cups to the already overflowing bin, and were baffled when I insisted they take them to the car, which was ten steps away. "But there's a bin!" Yes you numpties, and the wind is already spreading its contents everywhere. Be part of the solution, not the problem.

Just throw it on the ground

• the general public, probably

There is a potentially good way to do this, ensure the cafe uses minimal packaging and what packaging is used is compostable. Then just have compost bins.

Performative capitalism + fake environmentalism at it's worst. Ugh.

It's like my university campus removing all ashtrays to stop people from smoking.

Don't buy anything at the cafe if you're not prepared to carry it out, I wouldn't.

Just take your own rubbish home

They just don’t want to pay people to empty the bins. Defunding. DEFUNDING!

That's not how this works.

If you're planning a picnic, you bring your own trash bags, sort your trash, and dispose of it properly. And you will eventually make the effort to produce less rubbish, for example, ask to take your order without napkins or a plastic bag.

When I was visiting England I remember my grandpa and I walking around London looking for a trash can and being shocked at how rare they were compared to the US

Looks like the bean-counters thought they could easily axe the trash cost by shoving onto everyone else. I doubt it will increase the natural beauty there.

We have a commitment to producing no rubbish on-site. Well, we had one, but then budget cuts took away our garbage bins, so now I guess you have a commitment to producing no rubbish on-site.

Translation: we fired the guy that empties the trash, it's your job now.

So bring our own bin and pickup the stuff other people dropped as well?

So they're creating litter that they can bay about and use to make the park a members-only place.

there is a bin in the café according to you lmao.

this is ridiculous tbh, protecting wildlife is more important than your convenience in that place lmao, you're annoyed that you have to walk inside to throw your trash?? wtf lol.

I'm on board with this. Don't bring rubbish into woodland areas; and if you do bring it - take it back with you.

I'm sure the bins were very convenient - but its a convenience that only helps you leave trash in the woodland for someone else to collect. And as others have pointed out, the rubbish can cause problems even if it is all put in the bin.

So yeah, I can see that it is mildly frustrating - but I don't think 'take your rubbish home' is too much of an ask.

Geniuses have no understanding of how some people can be dirty.

This is an interesting read:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494421001225?via=ihub

For some context: This paper discusses how more trash cans negatively impact how people perceive a natural space, but removing them without providing effective signage may increase litter.

A combination of effective signage and having easily accessible bins (for staff to maintain) near park entries and exits lowered the amount of litter and improved how people perceived the natural space.

It's been this way as long as I can remember down at Moors Valley. From my limited observations there, it surprisingly works much better than you might expect.

Even Wait Disney knew this doesn't work