I have been watching magnet fishing and people love to toss stuff over bridges without a second thought on the environmental impact. Hiding evidence I can almost understand but not lawnmowers, car batteries, etc.
It seems deeper fines should be made to discourage this terrible behavior.
people are inherently lazy. fines are only for poor people.
if you want to solve the problem, provide an easy method for the general public to correctly dispose of shit, and let them know about it.
the issue being that that kind of social awareness and general action costs money, and conservatives would rather watch the world burn than have their taxes raised.
ye, and if you don’t like the negative connotations of “lazy,” substitute it with “attentive to making cost effective decisions.”
if it costs more, in time or in money, for an individual to properly dispose of something than the negative consequences of just chucking it in a river, the latter option will be chosen. this hilights the importance of community organization to set up a means for disposal, to make it accessible, and to make it known. by working together both the labor cost of disposal and the externality cost of environmental damage can be limited beyond what any individual could do.