Littering and Holy Ground

When I was in the seventh grade, I remember shouting “LITTERBUG!” at a girl in the outdoor lunch arbor.  She’d dropped a sandwich wrapper and let it blow away.  Moments later mine blew away and I ran after it and picked up hers too.  She called me a litterbug as well.  I wonder if my disgust had any effect on her.

I cannot fathom the reason for litter.  Seriously.  What would impel anyone to fling garbage on the ground on their community?  Throw trash out the window?  It’s so easy and tidy to have a litter bag in the car. 

Signs along the road urge motorists to call and report littering.  It probably cost taxpayers gazillions to clean it up.  For a society that bemoans heavy taxes, you’d think we stop throwing out litter then paying someone to clean it up.

The main street near me, Pacific Highway, is now awash in litter, by far worse than a mere five years ago.  Drifts of it pile up by the abandoned bank.  Gutters full of it are in front of La Tienda.  The former grocery store, now a dollar store, has papers blowing across their parking lot like cottonwood fluff in June.  The woman in front of Mo Betta Platinum Beauty Salon was sweeping up a two foot snowdrift of fast food cups and hamburger wrappers. The former KFC, now a Vietnamese Pho shop, has added more trash receptacles, and the Goodwill has an attendant so that people don’t dump junk there.

On a trip to Bavaria recently, I was agog at their prim villages and neat roadsides.  There were fastidious sidewalks, swept forests, sparkling rivers, and persnickety yards. Is it too much to ask that the richest nation on earth try harder?  I was embarrassed when the German relatives came to visit me, and pondered the differences in societies and cultures wherein one littered and one didn’t.  It made me want to go eat a sausage.

I started thinking about “holy ground” and wondered about sacred places. Seems ironic that Moses had to take off his shoes in the wasteland desert because the place he stood was holy ground. Very little but thorns and scorpions in deserts, but this was the very place deemed sacred. So how do we get people to view their community as worthy of being clean? The first step, for me at least, might be seeing neighbors as something other than ignorant and lazy. Moses, who had a speech impediment, was the very one chosen to speak for public speaking, and impel a people to leave their homes and strike out across the wilderness.  Who knows, maybe a former “LITTERBUG!” might be leading a campaign today to stop litter.

Some ideas on ways to forestall litter in your community:

1.      Contact your city hall and ask them to clean it up, have anti-litter campaigns, town clean up days, and more trash bins.

2.      Contact elected officials.  Got a state representative in your neighborhood?  We do.  I’m calling her.

3.      Contact local businesses and ask them to help.  More trash bins?  Hire a sweeper truck? Employee patrols of trash pick up?

4.      Contact local TV or newspapers.  Our newspaper has a “Rant and Rave” section where you can submit your complaint or praise for community action. Perhaps the TV is having a slow news day and can urge people not to litter.

5.      Organize a Clean Up Day with your church, Scout group, or community.

6.      Post signs urging people to stop littering, and use trash bins.