For Earth Day, my company organized an outing - we were going out on the streets of Westwood, picking up trash. (Well, OK, and we had a picnic after that).
There are a couple of things I learned from this:
- The famed hypodermic needles lying around - urban myth, at least in Westwood.
- There’s a reason people who do this for a living use a tong, and not just gloves - my back hurts from only doing this 45 minutes
- Obviously, people are not really interested in their environment at all. The only people who commented were old or homeless. Or, as one of my colleagues put it, they were able to move slowly enough to actually notice their environment. Oh, and one middle-aged guy thought we were a chain gang.
But the main thing to take away from this:
Seriously. The amount of cigarette butts on the streets is insane - probably 75% of our total trash haul. Often you find it even in close proximity to ash trays. Which jives perfectly what I see from most smokers - just blithely flinging their trash everywhere. Even out of the car while being on the highway. (I had a couple of those land in my car, thank you very much!)
So please, if you have to smoke, do pay some attention to your environment and put your trash where it belongs, OK?