O que significa "littering"?

Since I talked about a very common sign on the previous post, I thought it'd be a good idea to insist on that topic. During the World Cup here in Brazil, signs in English were very common around the cities where the matches were being played. While I was watching one of the many news reports on that big event, I saw right behind the newsman a sign reading "no littering please". Do you know what that means?

To litter means to make a place or area untidy with rubbish or a large number of objects left lying about. For example, you go to a beach and see a sign that says "no littering" or "please do not litter here". That means they don't want you to leave any kind of object or trash on the beach. They expect you to be decent enough to pick up after yourself, that is to say, to clean up your own mess. Littering can be even a crime in some places.

If you litter a place, you do not necessarily make it dirty. The simple act of taking the objects out of order and making the place untidy can be what we call littering. So imagine you have a wife that throws all her clothes around the room every time she wants to pick something to wear. You can say her clothes littered the room because they made a mess out of it, they made the room look like hell. The room is littered with clothes. On Twitter, someone wrote "If I was a police officer, I would just drive around and give people tickets for littering. That's all I would do." He was just trying to express how upset he is at people who have the habit of throwing trash on the streets. That's all for today guys. See you next time!