Litter is caused by people, but there are many different sources of litter. If you are doing a litter survey this is one of the things that you might be trying to find out so that you can take action against the source of the litter. Here are some of the main categories:
Pedestrians/individuals
e.g. fast food packaging, drinks cans, cigarette ends and lottery tickets. Anything that has been dropped by a person walking. This category can be divided further into different types of people e.g. school pupils and adults if you are doing a survey of school grounds and want to distinguish between litter dropped by children and litter coming in from outside.
Motorists e.g. cans, cigarettes and fast food packaging thrown out of cars either while they are driving along or parked in a lay-by or car park.
Business waste
e.g. packaging including cardboard and plastic wrapping, paper and envelopes, anything that has come directly form a business. Sometimes it has escaped from rubbish bags or skips left out for collection, in other cases it has been dumped on purpose to avoid having to pay for it to be taken away.
Domestic waste e.g. packaging and other rubbish blowing along the street after bins have been blown over in the wind. Anything that has come from houses rather than businesses. Sometimes it is caused by accident but other times it is just laziness; things left lying around in the garden blow out into the street and become litter.
Construction waste
e.g. builders rubble and other waste left over from building sites. Sometimes it is just left behind, other times it is dumped away from the building site (this is called flytipping).
Animal faeces e.g. dog poo or any other type of animal faeces such as horse or cattle. Dog poo is the most commonly found type of animal faeces and the most hazardous because it carries diseases that affect humans.