I have noticed in my community that there seems to be more litter than when I first moved here about two years ago. It's an affluent town and what that means to me is that people are supposed to be more conscious (example: better educated). In many ways that is true: I have never seen so many joggers, LOL! In the last town I lived in, which was workingclass, there were so many overweight people and so much driving kids to school. And litter...Lots of it

One thing I have been noticing about litter is that most of it is from fast food and other junk food items. So I wonder what this says about the consumer of junk: that in addition to putting gross non-food into their mouths, they don't care about dumping garbage onto the beautiful lawns and tidy streets...

Do you ever do anything about litter? Do you pick it up and what if you see someone littering? What I do is say "You dropped something." Usually that gives the litterbug the message that what they are doing is not going unnoticed.

Wow.
I was just walking at my local park,which has a basketball court,and the guys must have left 10 empty water bottles and food wrappers laying there,with a trash can 30 feet away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Vinny

Vinny, it's funny you say that. One day I was Downtown (Chicago) and someone was handing out leaflets. A teenage girl took the paper, balled it up, and threw it on the ground, even though the trash can was right next to her. I saw it, I picked up her paper and asked her why she did that when the can was right there. You should have seen her mouth: wide open! And she looked kinda rough, too. I think she was so shocked that anyone gave a damn about litter that she couldn't think of what to say! Yup, it's a pet peeve of mine, too. But I have started to pick up litter here and there just to be part of the solution, rather than just bitching about it. I think I would like to bring a special bag for recycling all those plastic bottles that I see thrown away

I was taught from an early age to not just throw stuff on the ground, unless it was biodegradable; my mom delighted in chucking apple and pear cores out of the window of the wood clad station wagon onto a bit of scrub, because she insisted that other animals would take away the remaining flesh and seeds and the rest would compost down in the weather. And maybe there would be a new tree there someday! But woe unto us if we threw anything else outside, or left our toys outside, or anything--a sweater, a chair, a puzzle--out of place at home or outside. It's a matter of training your kids to act like evolved bipeds: fewer and fewer parents bother anymore. The Reptile Brain is on the ascent.

Couldn't agree more!!!

Like graffiti, a little rubbish begets more rubbish, so it's important to get rid of it a.s.a.p. My husband and I often pick up trash when we are on walks along the beach or road. Being a tiny part of the solution makes us feel less frustrated about the amount of litter and the slobs that create it. I only wish I had their addresses so I could drop the bags we collect on their front lawns and spread it all out, of course.

One day I was filling my car with gas when a girl with a group of teens in the back of a pick up truck dropped a big paper drink cup of ice on the ground close to me. I immediately picked it up, handed it to her and said, "Oops, you dropped this." Maybe it was my look of total inocence, but as with your experience she was so surprised that she couldn't think of anything to say. Only later did I realize that I had risked being laughed at, cursed at, or worse. Luckily, she took the cup back and they drove off.

I don't guess posting how much it costs to remove litter is much of a deterrant to slobs. When I lived in Texas they had a litter campaign with the slogan:
Don't mess with Texas.
It appealed to the macho crowd and littering decreased noticibly. Whatever helps.


My favorite raw vegan

I was just thinking about this today actually. About how depressing it is to live around groups of people because invariably enough of them don't care about things to ruin it for everyone. There is so much garbage on the ground here, trash and recyclables. So many mddeathalds bags, you never see an empty organic carrot wrapper on the ground, it's always fast food junk. And the cigarette butts, Oh My Word. Did you know ingestion of as few as 4 butts is enough to kill a child or a small animal? The are the single most littered item in the world too. Oh, and my personal favourite, the dog bombs. You know what? City dog owners are frikken inconsiderate pigs.

it is kind of depressing, its what I hated about summers back in my home town, crescent city is such a gorgeous area, and sure a lot of the locals would litter, thats bad enough, but OMG...during the summer, as the tourists come through... it was enough to make me cry... the sides of the roads through our beautiful redwoods COVERED in litter... people just throwing their fastfood crap out the window as they go...

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Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

yeah

to answer the original post
i definitely believe there is a correlation between diet, and litter ( or non littering) behaviours

it makes sense

those who are raw vegan have a deep appreciation for what nature is
and what nature gives
and how nature gives so selflessly in order for us to thrive

so it makes sense that we wish to show our gratitude and respect for nature by keeping it pristine

its just a deep instinct

i dunno, Ive known some SAD eaters that where militant environmentalists...and some vegans (albeit not raw) who where slobs and litter bugs... My theory is that anyone of any diet can love the environment, just that those who love the environment are more likely to attempt a more peaceful form of co-existence with it, like veganism...raw or otherwise...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

I will never forget that commercial with the Indian standing next to a highway with trash at his feet,as he sheds a tear.

Vinny

eaglefly Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I will never forget that commercial with the
> Indian standing next to a highway with trash at
> his feet,as he sheds a tear.
>
> Vinny


Me, too! It was from the early '70s, if memory serves. I was in about first grade at the time. Quite the ecology movement, as they called it back then The first Earth Day was 1970, so that makes sense. Remember that slogan: "Give a hoot-don't pollute? with the owl? We actually had a recyling center where we dropped off our papers and tins every Saturday. I wonder whatever happened to that...And on the infrequent occasions when my mother bought us soda, it came in bottles that we had to take back to get the deposit returned...Ah, the good ole days

if i toss some pistachio seed shells in a parking lot, is that considered litter?

i used to do this, but then i thought about it and decided to not do it, cuz maybe the owners of the businesses around the parking lot might not be happy to see a bunch of pistachio seed shells on the ground, and maybe people don't want to step on them crunch crunch, and yeah it's biodegradable and they'll probably be blown away by the wind, but yeah i dunno, kinduv a grey area... if i owned the parking lot i wouldn't mind seeing pistachio seed shells on the ground, but i don't own any parking lots, but who really owns land anyway, isn't it all owned by earth and we're all just renters?

monkeys in trees toss fruit pits and peels all over the ground and don't think twice, and they're actually benefiting the land by spreading seeds and nutrients and such... but i guess a pistachio tree ain't about to sprout in the middle of a parking lot, but it might, but then it probably would eventually get run over by a car and that would be sad but hey, it is what it is, and i wasn't tossing seeds anyway, except maybe those pistachio seeds with the shell that's still all sealed, but sometimes i open those with pliers

[www.youtube.com]

Here is the Indian.
It sounds like Orson Wells narrating the commercial!
From 1971 I believe.

Vinny



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2011 04:14PM by eaglefly.

Thanks Vinny,

I had remember it, but I am glad to get to see it again.

I have been thinking of adopting a block and just picking up all trash I see (with separate bag for recyclables). I think I have to get past the "why should I clean up THEIR lawn" mentality. The home owners are pretty good about their properties but some of the apts. and condos leave a bit to be desired. And it seems to be that the village should be on top of the stuff that falls under public property. But if that's what it takes, I would rather do it than have to see it constantly! I remember in my last town a woman would go around with a bag all the time as she walked her dog. I would see her picking up the litter
Funny thing about this town: when I first moved in, the lawns were pretty spotless. It was a blue-collar town with modest properties but people kept up what they had. As they moved out, other people without the same values moved in and it got shot to hell. I finally got tired of it so one day I typed out a flier and said something like this:

Hi-
I live down the street and recently I have noticed that there is a lot of litter everywhere. Even if you didn't throw it, please pick it up and keep the lawns clean. It looks like a slum around here and it used to be so much nicer. Thank you!