Litter, Litter, Everywhere

Abstract Sculpture by Christoph Neimann, courtesy of NYTimes.com.

Yesterday when I got home from church, I stopped to look around instead of scurrying straight into the house, as it was a pleasant 63 and breezy.  And guess what I saw?  Junk.  Lots of it.  Plastic bags, cigarette boxes and butts, candy wrappers, ketchup packets, paper towels, crushed glass bottles, solid lumps of what probably used to be toilet paper.  I made a lap around the house and filled one of the floating plastic bags with trash.

As I rounded the corner, two old men and a young woman approached me.  She was wearing scrubs, probably a hospice nurse, and supporting one of the men as he shuffled down the street.  "Wish more people had that lady's idea," she said to them.  "I seen this thing (gesturing toward what looked like a piece of clothing that had been run over several times) yesterday, and I can't believe I'm seein' it again today!  Nobody even picked it up!"

I smiled at her.  "It doesn't pick itself up, does it?"  "Nooo, it sure don't," she agreed.

We live on a corner lot, so a lot of the trash from the street ends up there.  We try to joke about it; "Honey, that 40 of Bud Ice you drank last night is still in the yard," or "Are you finished with that KFC bag?  Because maybe you could bring it inside."  But it bugs us.  We plant and tend our yard carefully, and we want it to look nice, but there are more litterbugs than there are of us.

After all the anti-litter campaigns of the 1960's, it amazes me that there are still so many people around who feel free to discard their trash in public.  Rob sees this a lot in the city where he goes to school; young people, especially, will be eating as they walk, and suddenly the box of french fries or the can of Coke will fall to the ground as if forgotten.  I've seen little old ladies in Athens search for a crevice in which to wedge their trash, and somehow even that is not as deplorable as that kind of passivity. It's especially baffling in an urban atmosphere, Rob pointed out, because people actually live and work there; they have to walk those streets every day, so you would think they'd go out of their way to keep them looking nice.

When I see things like this, my mind inevitably wanders back to their upbringing.  Who neglected to teach these kids that the world isn't their trash can?  That the right thing to do is to hang on to your garbage until there's a suitable place to toss it (the woods, if it's an apple core, or a trash can, if it won't decompose within a few weeks)?  And, further -- that this planet is a great gift, and we are dangerously close to squandering it with the glibness of the Prodigal Son?

I guess there is one upside to our situation.  A certain Muppet would feel right at home in my backyard.

Comments

[Brian]

This reminded me of something that I witnessed several years ago as I was walking near Lexington Market (Baltimore).

I was directly behind a very young mother who had a young but ambulatory child in tow. I watched in disbelief as she reached into her purse and pulled out a piece of candy, unwrapped it, deposited it in her mouth, and then, with an almost suave flick of the wrist, threw the wrapper onto the sidewalk -- even though she was only three or four feet away from a public trash can -- directly in front of the child, who stepped over it as if it had always been there.

This elicited a swirl of conflicting emotions: anger, disgust; sadness, pity. I wish that I could have said something to the woman, but a particular 'demographic incongruity' between her and myself guaranteed that any criticism of her actions, no matter how gently offered, would be taken as hostile. If one be taught in such a fashion at so young an age, is it any wonder that this city is so detestably filthy?

When I lived in Seton Hill, the wind would howl through the Tessier Street alley next to my house in such a way as to form a vortex that deposited all manner of leaves and blowable trash directly in front of my door, to greet me at every exit. One of the neighbourhood people once complained to me about the mess until I explained what was happening, and that it would be impractical for me to quit my job so that I could stay home and clean my portion of the sidewalk every fifteen minutes, for such would have been necessary.

That turning the world at large into one's personal trash can has become an attitude, not precisely acceptable, as much as tolerated, is a sad commentary indeed upon our culture.