As I was walking my dog, Enzo, this weekend, something buried in the leaves caught his eye and caught my attention. Enzo had found a candy wrapper presumably left over from trick-or-treaters this week and I grabbed it and threw it away before he could lock the pretzel bag in-between his jaws. As we continued the walk, I began to noticed the large amount of plastic bags tangled in bushes, beer cans crushed on the sidewalk and cigarettes laying between the cracks in the sidewalks.
Littering is caused by laziness, lack of environmental education, no knowledge of consequences and additional easily curable motives. 75% of people have admitted to littering in the past 5 years. Compared to the drastic damage littering can cause, the amount that littering is present in our behaviors is troubling. Littering spreads disease, can cause injury to people and animals and is expensive to clean when government funds could be used elsewhere.
After realizing the effect that littering has, please join me in realizing what we can do. If you see something on the street, pick it up and throw it away. Something that sounds so simple can have a larger effect, imagine if we all took those five seconds to stop, pick up and throw away something that has such a negative impact on the environment and our communities.
I can’t believe you saw all of this on one walk! I feel like we tend to overlook litter because we have normalized trash, almost like it is apart of our landscape.
It was troubling to take a closer look at the street I walk down almost every day and to think how I never noticed the amount of litter before! It feels so normalized it is scary to think about our mindset of just expecting it.
These images are almost beautiful, but also so disturbing! Nicely done.
Thank you!
Are there any volunteer groups or something that people can join if they want to help to clean up the streets? Also, are there any common sense things that we can do to prevent litter, like simply placing more public trash cans along the sidewalks and streets?
I know when I am walking around town, there are often not many public trash cans. Usually, I’d hold onto the candy wrapper or whatever until I find a trash can or I could go into a nearby shop/restaurant and use their trash can. Sadly, many people just find it easier to litter.
One cool group you can join is Plogging! It stands for “Picking Up Litter While Jogging”. There is one through the University of Pittsburgh.
That’s a good idea! My partner picks up litter wherever he sees it, and he passed that habit onto me. 😀 We’d both love that org, so thanks for sharing.