A service group I belong to sponsors a local road for litter pick up. One Saturday every 3 months we don orange vests, grab gigantic trash bags and take to the roadside. Even though picking up petrified garbage is a bit gross, there is an element of fascination over what we find decorating the grass and underbrush. It’s hard to conceive of people actually rolling down their window and tossing such things out on to Mother Nature’s landscape. The feeling we are helping to set her back to rights is rewarding and helps make the task more tolerable.
You would think the garbage in the grass would be the least pleasant aspect of service project. Not true. Amazingly, people have come to assume anyone in a vest picking up garbage along the road must be paying penance for a crime. I mean, what law abiding citizen would choose to clean up after man kind? As we clean, we are often faced with dirty looks, cars that drive recklessly around us and even people who intentionally litter right in front of us. It’s outrageous. I don’t mean to imply that kind of behavior would be acceptable if we were indeed petty thieves. The fact we are innocents in orange makes it worse somehow.
People make assumptions based on what they see most often. Though I’m in favor of putting those who violate the law to work, I don’t think the average citizen is off the hook on cleaning up the human debris field. Perhaps if we make a commitment to take on trash daily, it won’t be so out of the ordinary to see law abiding citizens picking up cans and fast food bags.
What wonderful work you do! You’re an inspiration, Lisa 😀