I live in a wonderful city. I am grateful that there is a huge Royal Park at the end of the road.
In the summer I loved to take an early morning stroll in the park and often headed to the Round Pond, which is man made and very popular with swans and ducks.
I was stunned by the number of plastic carrier bags that have been thrown into the pond after people have given bread to the wildfowl.
Where do people think these bags will go?
I take them out and put them in one of the many waste baskets that circle the pond, baskets that seem to be visible to only me.
When I go to the local shops, I pass a small area of land that has shrubs, flowers and bushes.
You won't be surprised to hear that people throw trash onto this mini public 'garden', even though there is a waste basket close by.
I pay local taxes that pays for the gardeners to look after this area and the street sweepers to clean up the trash.
I also pick up the trash when I pass it, bottles, coffee cups, cigarette packets and fast food wrappers. Recently I picked up a large plastic syringe filled with what looked like a milk mixture. That scared me at first..what was I picking up ? Was I putting my own health at risk by this indiscriminate picking up of rubbish?
Note to self---wash your hands the moment you get in...and maybe even have some of that anticeptic hand gel in my bag? and take extra care as to what I am picking up.
This is a great exercise in learning not to judge others for their action /non-action.
This is just to do with me and what contribution I can be to the planet today.
What contribution can you be to our planet today
Tigress
Hi Tigress
What you said is great because rubbish seems to be infilterating our landscape gradually. I live in countryside and on my walks even on very quiet country roads/lanes I find wrappers, cans, bottles, sandwich packegings etc on the grass bank. Sometimes I and my husband take a bag and pick all we see and thats that.
It is just something we do for our own joy and satisfaction.
So nice to hear of your lack of judgement. Being non-judgemental is the greatest personal blessing because there is only one Self in infinite guises.
I feel exactly the same -BUT my 3 1/2 year old daughter now wants to put everything in the rubbish bins & there's a lot of stuff I don't want her to touch 🙁
Also-there's a college near us & the rubbish just dumped at lunchtime is unbelievable/dangerous. When I complained about 2 years ago they sent out Community Wardens which was great - now they just have a guy sort of tidying up afterwards-so you're expected to just avoid all th cr**p/BROKEN GLASS for about 2 hours!!!
I popped out to go to the shops for a few things.
It's raining and I had 2 bags on the way home.
I picked up a crisp pkt, a red bull can, a fag pkt and a card.
I felt eccentric, but the plant kingdom said thank you
tigress
Tigress
I'm from Australia and have lived here in the UK for 15 years. From my very first day of arriving here I was horrified at how dirty it is. I just was not used to the street litter, the dog mess, the bin bags, the filthy public toilets. Australian cities are very clean. Sure, you also get litter and lazy people and drunk people who urinate behind bus shelters... but it's a small minority.
I have no idea what can be done about it, and why it is a problem here and not in other countries. No idea at all. I wouldn't have a clue how you teach people to not litter. Where to start??
Ava x