Littering is a solvable problem though; it's a cultural practice and can therefore be addressed. For instance, in Japan there are very few public trash cans (ever since a terrorist attack which used them) and yet almost nobody there litters. If Japanese people can hold onto their trash until they find a trash can, everybody else can to. We need to greenlight the kind of social pressures which create this sort of conscientious culture, namely intense bullying of anybody who is caught littering.

> If Japanese people can hold onto their trash until they find a trash can, everybody else can to.

Perhaps you're right, but, living in a south east Asian country where trash is a major problem that goes far beyond simple littering, I think that will take several decades to change and we should look for something quicker.

There was a storm here yesterday and literally several tons of trash washed up onto the beach, as it does most days during the stormy season. This can't be classed as littering, it's a problem far far bigger than asking people to put things into bins.

Much of the trash on the beach probably was thrown into a bin at some point. The problem is what happens after that. Western countries ship their "recycling" off to developing countries, and when it ends up in the sea they get to say it wasn't their fault, while developing countries just don't bother with the plausible deniability step.