Two stories on littering caught my eye.
Robin Gibson, writing for the Muncie Star Press, has a story about littering in Muncie and an organization that helps clean it up. The AP has a story that appears in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette about junk that’s been in a ravine since 1957.
Generally, littering speaks of laziness and a pretty significant sense of entitlement. Rather than taking the usually minimal effort of getting trash to some appropriate spot, the person is going to inflict their trash on the rest of the world. My anecdotal experience is that smokers are often the most frequent offenders. For some reason, many of them think nothing of flicking their filters on the ground as if, for some reason, they don’t “count” as litter.
I was just thinking about littering yesterday, with my primary thought being amazement that people litter. Who is so lazy and self-centered that they think nothing of throwing trash out the car window? Many are, apparently. We walked 6 miles in Brownsburg yesterday and I was AMAZED at the amount of trash along the roads. I simply don’t understand it.
This entire state looks disgusting right now. Between the trash, the crumbling roads and the fact hardly any vegetation has turned green yet…Indiana looks like some old industrial park in Russia.
Litter can be accidental — the trash can knocked over in the wind with litter blowing everywhere, the plastic bag sucked out of an open car window, the dropped item when holding too much in one’s hands. We owe it to ourselves to not only not litter but also to pick up litter when we can. Grabbing a small plastic bag on the way out of the door for a walk and then filling up that bag does a lot to help clean up the litter, however slowly.
That said, like Paul, I don’t like smokers either because of their tendency to just drop filters everywhere. I nagged my wife (when she smoked) and my daughter to not drop butts on the ground. They are/were good in not doing so.
I would be happy if the dog walkers in my condo complex would “grab a small plastic bag on the way out of the door for a walk and then filling up that bag”. Talk about entitlement! Sometimes I (not a dog owner) go out to poop scoop the lawn before my granddaughters come over to play. And when the snow melted?? Man, they must have thought poop melts as well. It’s disgusting.
Andrew, elaborating on your point, I wonder if people know that you can now go to Russia in Google Earth in Street View and tour their cities, even relatively small ones. You can even drive on some side streets where you can see, first hand, the level of dilapidation and ruin to be found all over the country. As you do, ignoring the constant fencing, the interesting gingerbread houses and the abundance of brush and weeds, you will think that you are back home in Indiana. We could easily transplant streets in Indiana to Russia and nobody would know the difference. Oh, the joys of Indissippi.
I am with you that smokers are blatant litterers. And it is unacceptable.
And I would like a deposit law like Michigan has. It works.
That and ask retailers to not sell bottled beer or bottled liquor near college campuses.
Broken glass serves no one.
I move the dog doo doo off of my yard and onto the sidewalk.
And yes, I have seen dog walkers step in it.