The refuse worker strikes in the summer do not tell us little much about long-term trends on rubbish or littering.

But they certainly showed us how much - and what - we throw away. Bins in the centre of big cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh quickly overflowed, though they have greater capacity now than just a few years ago. And the thing most of us noticed as the trash was not removedtaken away: cups, disposable cupsones.

Scotland has an eat-and-drink-on-the-go culture.

This generates much of what fills our litter bins – by volume if not by weight: sandwich wrappers, crisp packets, cups and bottles. And this is also the stuff we drop in the street, post into hedges and chuck out of our cars.

Three years ago, researchers volunteered to count rubbish in some 13 bins in a Scottish city centre. There were 1362 cups, compared to 530 bottles and 460 cans. We like our to-go coffees. These are all easily recyclable.

Read more: How Glasgow is shaking of its litter and fly-tipping scourge

Whisper it, but the bin strikes brought this home. Suzanne Roberts of Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB) says: “The images of piles of packaging, cups and other waste from high street retailers and smaller stores should make us all think carefully not only about how we dispose of our waste but also about how we are consuming ever-increasing volumes of stuff – stuff that has to go somewhere.

“Single-use cups for hot and cold drinks are a highly visible element of litter – albeit all be it not the most common by far, which is cigarettes.

“But it doesn’t have to be this way, we can actually all do two simple things that would reduce the volume of cups being littered: take back the cup to be recycled to any of the major high-street retailers that offer a take-back service [over 90 stores in Glasgow alone]; or use a reusable cup”.

The Herald: An overflowing bin in Edinburgh

Ms Roberts was impressed when a barista at Costa in Perth told her during the strikes her cup could be returned to them rather than added to the piles of uncollected rubbish. “Most people don’t know major retailers will take any cup and recycle it if you return it to the store, and it was encouraging to know this message was being communicated to customers,” she said.

Big coffee or burger chains do not want their branded trash littering the streets.

That is a bad look. Some campaigners are targeting fast food outlets and supermarkets or trying to talk about one kind of littered item, say, plastic bags or hot drink cups.

But the sheer volume of litter on Scotland’s streets and other public places suggests there is more than one problem, and fixating on one thing will not bring the change the public says it wants.

There is a lot of talk about reaching net zero – or zero waste – and about the sheer amount of climate-changing carbon puked into our atmosphere in the process of making things we then throw away.

But Barry Fisher, Ms Roberts’ boss at KSB, stressed how harmful trash could be to the environment, to nature.

“Litter is a global, but yet very local, issue that affects everyone across the world,” he said.

“We know that the drivers of poor local environmental quality caused by litter and flytipping is the same unsustainable use of resources which is driving the climate crisis. This is clearly exemplified by the multitudes of disposable items which are used just once before being carelessly disposed of as litter.  

“So often we put our blinkers on and deal with carbon emissions alone. But we must remember and remind each other of the complexity and interlinkage of the issues that have led us here.

“We must all consider what we buy, when, how we use it, when we reuse it and how we dispose of it. We must think about the carbon footprint of a plastic yolk from a six pack as well as the impact it can have when littered by entangling our wildlife.”