The road less cycled

It’s nearly sacrilegious or heretical in our society to openly express acceptance of littering, or to actually engage in it oneself. In high school, Principal Neufeld spoke of using the amount of litter in the hallways as a barometer of student’s attitudes. At the time I agreed in full; and to some extent still do. If the hallways are cluttered with garbage of all sorts, it’s generally an indication that the students don’t give a shit, which would appear to translate to more than simply the cleanliness of the hallways; also their marks, morals, values, etc. Concern for one’s habitation (and make no mistake, school was and is a habitation) is a basic benchmark of character. Ever hear someone labelled a “pack-rat?” Well, I doubt that person was a socially respected individual.

There are exceptions of course; some people are just natural tinkerers, fixers, refurbishers, recyclers of whatever they can lay their hands on. These people are driven and can’t stand waste, hate to see anything thrown out. So they don’t. Instead, they’re always welding this gizmo to that gadget, and coming out with some pretty spiffy stuff. Kudos to them. But for every one of them, there’s five who never throw anything out regardless of it’s condition, and seem to attract “stuff” like a messy beard attracts food crumbs or blood draws sharks. The metaphors are appropriate, as more than likely they have the messy beard as well, and like sharks, their stuff will eventually consume them, weighing on their backs until they can turn neither left nor right and stagger with each step. Remember the late and brilliantly offensive George Carlin saying how, “Other people’s stuff is shit, but somehow your shit is stuff”?

Of course, dirty hallways can also be indicative of apathy at higher levels; perhaps the administration simply doesn’t care enough to adequately fund the janitorial department, or the janitors take every chance to slack off, or in the case of my high school, (remember, this is hypothetical) the private donors don’t care enough to actually donate in adequate levels forcing budget cutbacks, or hell, perhaps dirty hallways can be traced right up to those who control our money supply not caring enough to manage it wisely, generously, responsibly, or perhaps most of all, honestly. Truly, there’s a crescendo of implications.

But let’s not think about this too deeply; we might just hurt ourselves or actually accomplish something and we couldn’t have that. Oh no. Let’s just accept that littering is bad and those who do it are lazy and apathetic and that lots of litter means bad people and clean streets mean good people. Keep it simple, stupid.

Before I continue, let me point out that I’ve participated in garbage clean-ups, and not just at the behest of an elementary school teacher in a bad mood and equipped with lots of bright new shiny garbage picker-uppers, or, just to use my favorite childhood phrase, “super-dooper-pooper-scoopers.” No, stretches of Clayburn Road, Clayburn Creek, Ravine Park, and Downes Creek are all cleaner because I felt the desire to chip in and lend a hand, or in the case of Downes, herd some of the fearsome “Streaming Eagles” crew down into the creek to haul out whatever we could find.

What happened next, to use the Downes Creek example, to the 11 garbage bags of wrappers, busted sports balls, barely recognizable bottles, and other miscellaneous junk we hauled out of that creek? We put it in the school dumpster for a garbage collection agency to come and collect, and lo and behold, to dump it again!!! That’s right. We put in all the effort (a good part of our weekend as I recall, to haul this shit out, just so it could be re-dumped, several hours drive away. How does this make sense?

Moreover, what actually benefit did we do the creek? Sure it looked a little nicer to the human eye, but I don’t think a coho salmon decked out in bright red spawning colors would look at that little pocket of intertwined condoms wedged in a back-eddy behind a log, and turn tail back downstream because “boy, I don’t know if I can spawn in the vicinity of used condoms.” (and for that matter, the contents of those condoms might well enrich that streambanks nutrient profile, lol) No, that old tire wedged in the streambank might take thousands if not tens of thousands of years to decay, so it’s not significantly affecting the water quality. Nor is it likely to be impeding fish progress, or in any way posing an immediate threat to wildlife or the local ecosystem. One exception would be six-pack rings which can strangle waterbirds, or plastic bags which can do the same, but in general, I think we can agree that a lot of garbage is fairly harmless.

So now we’ve taken our 11 garbage bags and dumped them. All we’ve done is re-arranged the waste and emitted tons of carbon in order to do, and oh yes, we’ve bumped up the GDP a notch because us urbanites paid those Cache Creek hill-billies money to take our crap. Whoopee. Now the waste is all concentrated in one area where nobody can see it, instead of being spread out where everybody sees it. So what happens next? Well, out of sight, out of mind is what happens. We accept that we can simply send our waste elsewhere. We subconsciously condition ourselves to believe that it’s okay to generate copious quantities of waste because it doesn’t affect us tangibly. We don’t think twice about buying those oh so tempting muffins from the supermarket and throwing out the package afterwards only to repeat the process next week. Sure we can sometime recycle the package, but only for a limited time and not neccesarily for the same purpose, besides which recycling takes energy too. Eventually it’ll still end up in Cache Creek.

What if instead of doing those garbage clean-ups, we had dedicated our time to educating people about the automotive waste fluids which undoubtably affect Downes Creek? I’m by no means advocating apathy here. Merely that efforts be re-directed, as has become almost cliche in the health-care field, towards addressing the issues rather than the symptoms. Instead of picking up somebody else’s garbage, why not write to manufacturers indicating the future loss of your business should they not take whatever steps possible to reduce packaging? Or put time into re-vegetation of the streambanks (which we did, too)? Or any number of projects with potentially valuable long-term impact?

Do I regret participating in those garbage pick-ups? No; the exercise did me well and I made friends out of it, and gained some great feelings of accomplishment, because at the time, I believed wholeheartedly in what I was doing. My opinions have evolved; hey, if Stephane Dion can evolve his opinion of a revenue-neutral carbon tax that affects an entire country, I think I can update my thinking about garbage. Because, as I can’t resist pointing out, my thoughts ain’t garbage.

Neither do I regret, however, releasing two organic energy bar wrappers and a bag that contained mixed nuts out of my sunroof today. I may have ruffled some feathers, but that’s about all.

What I do regret is buying items wrapped in plastic in the first place. That is true apathy. I am conscious of this when I buy, and I will buy items wrapped in plastic again because I’m one person on a schedule, but perhaps it’s time to re-examine packed lunches and homemade snacks. Were I truly motivated, it’s what I’d be doing.

That’s right; brown-bag it. Just like your momma taught ya.

You might be able to detox in a matter of days, but the planet can’t. No, the planet, needs thousands of years, and you just might not survive that process. I, for one, would rather not risk it.