Does litter bother you? When you see it in parks, especially when there are plenty of trash cans around? Does it seem like people would rather toss their trash out the window as they drive down the road rather than wait till they find a trash can? Do you shrug it off as – they have road cleanup crews for that, why bother?
I recall as a teenager when my parents and I moved to the Phoenix area and I could see the great difference attitude makes. I grew up in Oregon, which was heavily invested in recycling, especially bottles. When i got to Phoenix I was appalled at the lack of concern. It was personal because when I rode my bike on the streets the stretches of broken glass were a really up close hazard to me and my tires.
Fortunately many people have gotten personally involved in cleanup thorough adopting a street to regularly do trash pickups. Our local John Denver group did a 2-mile stretch up north for a while. One of the local Toastmasters clubs does it near where I live. And there is an Islamic Center that has adopted another stretch of road.
It isn’t hard to pick up. Yes, you should be careful, both about where you are and also use gloves or some kind of pickup tool. You should plan what type of bag or container you will use for collecting and where you will be dumping it. But every little bit helps and it doesn’t cost much in terms of time and effort. That along with recycling, composting, and just buying less stuff will go a long way to reducing the amount of garbage that goes to the landfills eventually. This is another of those ‘little things’ you can do.
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