Tuesday, February 21, 2017

A time of waste

When possible I try to pick up some litter. There's a lot of it. If something is recyclable I'll hold onto it until I get home, or - as today - until I see a recycling can that's left over from the morning's trash pickup. If not I'll just drop it in the nearest receptacle.

But here's the thing: A lot of time the nearest receptacle is only a few feet from where the litter was dropped. There are times when not littering is about as easy as littering, but people still go for the latter. It's like keeping the streets and the ground beyond them clean is not just not a priority; it's not even recognized as something good.

Do we actively want to poison the planet to death and then expire while straddling its corpse? Maybe we do.

2 comments:

susan said...

I'm in the habit of picking up litter as well, although usually the bits we come across are odd plastic drink bottles or bags left in the park. In general, while littering happens here it doesn't seem to be as prevalent as it in American cities. Still, it's ugly and at a low level (compared to the big picture) very destructive. A friend of mine once remarked how is it they've come to call garbage dumps landfills? Do they really believe that the land isn't sufficiently full as it is?

Ben said...

A huge number of the recyclables I pick up are liquor bottles, especially the little nips you can drink in one go. Whichever neighboring building I drop them into, the garbagemen must think it housed the mother of all drunken orgies.

Plastic bags I pick up when I can. I hate the idea of birds getting caught in them.

Hm, yes. I don't think the land needs us to complete it in that particular fashion.