I suppose that's it isn't it. Throughout history (and prehistory) some mug always had to clean up. It's just that they probably lived locally and didn't mind - just did it automatically when out walking the dog / dinosaur. Whereas now it's just so much more upsetting if you've driven for an hour to see somewhere and it turns out to be covered in tat. You'll clean it up. But you'd just like to have seen it pristine in the first place.

I came across this in some reading. It's about a holy well on Nell's Point on the Island of Barry. "Great numbers of women visited it on Ascension Day, and having washed their eyes in its water, each would drop a pin into it. As many as a pintful were once found on cleaning the well out." A pintful of pins - that's quite a lot. And what about the health and safety implications of washing your eyes in a pin-filled well? It'd be banned for sure today.