Be The Change
The other day I saw a woman picking up trash along the road I live on. I thought to myself, good for her for doing such a noble thing. I had often thought of picking up the trash along our road. Especially when I would walk along the road and just be disgusted with the amount of trash.
Sometimes the trash had a logical source, it was household recycling that had blown out of collection bins on recycle pick up day. That was sort of excusable, however mother nature (wind) has some blame there. Maybe us humans are to blame for perhaps not covering the recycling bins, especially on winding nights.
Today I was compelled to go for a walk. It has been awhile since I have been out and walking. Mostly because of the winter cold. Today I walked the road, and saw tons of trash. I was disgusted. Argh, why does our road have to be so littered.
As I was walking I noticed a discarded lottery ticket scratcher. I picked it up, because if it was a non-winner, I could enter it into the 2nd Chance lottery for cash drawings weekly and monthly. I picked up piece after piece of scratchers that were torn in quarters, and yet I hadn't found the section that had the precious barcode I would need to scan for the 2nd chance drawings. As I continued to pick up the scratcher pieces I started to get annoyed that there were no barcodes.
(Yakety Yak just started playing on Pandora... "Take out the papers and the trash"... ha ha)
The one piece that I finally found had a partial code, this was going to be a lot of work. I decided this wasn't worth it, but then I caught myself thinking... Why was I compelled to picking up lottery tickets, aka trash from the road, but hadn't just thought to pick up the trash. A cosmic nudge/message?
I then found a plastic bag, and decided to pick up the trash. Sometimes prioritizing the trash, such as styrofoam as public enemy number one, plastic as enemy number two, and sometimes skipping paper, aluminum or glass, as they might be able to "return to nature" faster than enemies one and two. As I filled the first plastic bag to the brim, I thought, ok, I will carry this home with me. Then another intact plastic bag appeared. Ok, I guess I am supposed to continue this clean up. I tied the first bag to the second and continued until the second bag was filled.
As the second bag was getting full, I really had to continue the prioritizing to styrofoam. MAN I REALLY HATE STYROFOAM!!! Why in the world is this not banned yet everywhere? There were several Dunkin Donuts cups and styrofoam packing material chunks. I got more and more annoyed everytime I saw more styrofoam, especially when it was a DD cup. Clearly the DD cups were people throwing trash from their cars. WHY?! Why can't you take your stupid cup home with you and attempt to dispose of it properly? Why throw it out of your car where you litter the road, make our community look horrible, and also create a threat to animals that might end up eating parts of the toxic substance?
I wonder if asking our local DD to stop using styrofoam cups could be a solution. Would they care? McDonalds isn't out of the clear, they had some toxic cups too along the road trash. Why are huge corporations not trying harder to use more responsible materials? Oh we know the answer, greed. Oh and well they have not been FORCED (government regulation) to. Sigh.
As I filled the second bag, I thought today's pick up was done. I couldn't fit anymore trash into bag two. Then a much larger plastic clear bag appeared. Continued the pickup until I filled the big bag to about probably 30 pounds of litter. At this point I had to stop as it was reaching its breaking point, and it was getting uncomfortable to carry.
I will go again someday and this time armed at the start with my own big garbage bag, and pickup trash until I fill the bag. Cleaning up the road. Cleaning up one section of the Earth, making my road a nicer place to walk, and strongly hoping that the people that throw this trash from their cars (95% of the trash I picked up was likely car thrown trash) will stop it and dispose of this crap themselves. Be the change, right?
For now, I am cleaning up my road because I don't want to see this litter. We all should clean up our roads. We all shouldn't litter. We all should clean up after ourselves. Right? Wasn't that one of the first things we all learned in kindergarten?
And stop using styrofoam! Or start to insist that businesses don't do use it. I wonder if I went to DD and asked if they had an alternative to the styrofoam cup for my coffee, and if they didn't then I would refuse to buy a coffee. Shouldn't we send messages like this to the corporates? Well yes, we should, but they likely don't care. If it means a fraction of a penny more per sale... you know, greed. Of course, no one likes government to get involved (banning). Sigh. Oh well.
These were interesting cosmic messages today. Food for thought.
Sometimes the trash had a logical source, it was household recycling that had blown out of collection bins on recycle pick up day. That was sort of excusable, however mother nature (wind) has some blame there. Maybe us humans are to blame for perhaps not covering the recycling bins, especially on winding nights.
Today I was compelled to go for a walk. It has been awhile since I have been out and walking. Mostly because of the winter cold. Today I walked the road, and saw tons of trash. I was disgusted. Argh, why does our road have to be so littered.
As I was walking I noticed a discarded lottery ticket scratcher. I picked it up, because if it was a non-winner, I could enter it into the 2nd Chance lottery for cash drawings weekly and monthly. I picked up piece after piece of scratchers that were torn in quarters, and yet I hadn't found the section that had the precious barcode I would need to scan for the 2nd chance drawings. As I continued to pick up the scratcher pieces I started to get annoyed that there were no barcodes.
(Yakety Yak just started playing on Pandora... "Take out the papers and the trash"... ha ha)
The one piece that I finally found had a partial code, this was going to be a lot of work. I decided this wasn't worth it, but then I caught myself thinking... Why was I compelled to picking up lottery tickets, aka trash from the road, but hadn't just thought to pick up the trash. A cosmic nudge/message?
I then found a plastic bag, and decided to pick up the trash. Sometimes prioritizing the trash, such as styrofoam as public enemy number one, plastic as enemy number two, and sometimes skipping paper, aluminum or glass, as they might be able to "return to nature" faster than enemies one and two. As I filled the first plastic bag to the brim, I thought, ok, I will carry this home with me. Then another intact plastic bag appeared. Ok, I guess I am supposed to continue this clean up. I tied the first bag to the second and continued until the second bag was filled.
As the second bag was getting full, I really had to continue the prioritizing to styrofoam. MAN I REALLY HATE STYROFOAM!!! Why in the world is this not banned yet everywhere? There were several Dunkin Donuts cups and styrofoam packing material chunks. I got more and more annoyed everytime I saw more styrofoam, especially when it was a DD cup. Clearly the DD cups were people throwing trash from their cars. WHY?! Why can't you take your stupid cup home with you and attempt to dispose of it properly? Why throw it out of your car where you litter the road, make our community look horrible, and also create a threat to animals that might end up eating parts of the toxic substance?
I wonder if asking our local DD to stop using styrofoam cups could be a solution. Would they care? McDonalds isn't out of the clear, they had some toxic cups too along the road trash. Why are huge corporations not trying harder to use more responsible materials? Oh we know the answer, greed. Oh and well they have not been FORCED (government regulation) to. Sigh.
As I filled the second bag, I thought today's pick up was done. I couldn't fit anymore trash into bag two. Then a much larger plastic clear bag appeared. Continued the pickup until I filled the big bag to about probably 30 pounds of litter. At this point I had to stop as it was reaching its breaking point, and it was getting uncomfortable to carry.
I will go again someday and this time armed at the start with my own big garbage bag, and pickup trash until I fill the bag. Cleaning up the road. Cleaning up one section of the Earth, making my road a nicer place to walk, and strongly hoping that the people that throw this trash from their cars (95% of the trash I picked up was likely car thrown trash) will stop it and dispose of this crap themselves. Be the change, right?
For now, I am cleaning up my road because I don't want to see this litter. We all should clean up our roads. We all shouldn't litter. We all should clean up after ourselves. Right? Wasn't that one of the first things we all learned in kindergarten?
And stop using styrofoam! Or start to insist that businesses don't do use it. I wonder if I went to DD and asked if they had an alternative to the styrofoam cup for my coffee, and if they didn't then I would refuse to buy a coffee. Shouldn't we send messages like this to the corporates? Well yes, we should, but they likely don't care. If it means a fraction of a penny more per sale... you know, greed. Of course, no one likes government to get involved (banning). Sigh. Oh well.
These were interesting cosmic messages today. Food for thought.