DEFINITION
Litter
Rubbish carelessly dropped or left about (especially in public places)
“If I don’t drop litter someone won’t have a job”
I used to, do you? I used to empty my ashtray under my car when I stopped at a service station on the motorway, or I’d leave fast food wrappers under the car, because I couldn’t be bothered going to the bin; and of course, I always threw my cigarette butts out of the window.
I have no idea why I did these things. I wasn’t deliberately setting out to make a mess or to cause someone more work. I just couldn’t be bothered. I didn’t consciously think, “I will drop this cigarette butt here and I don’t care if I make a mess,” it just didn’t even cross my mind, it was a purely automatic response.
What a change! Why? Well, let’s start from a different angle shall we? How many pavements, beaches, parks, rivers or streets are full of litter? What are the most offending articles? I don’t have any statistics, but I can take a pretty good guess, what about you? Cigarette ends? Chewing gum? Plastic soft drink bottles and cans? Fast food containers? Plastic bags?
So who can we blame for this litter?
The cigarette companies, for making filters which are not biodegradable in the street? The chewing gum companies, for selling a product based on petroleum that sticks to the roads and any other surface it comes into contact with? The fizzy drink manufacturer for making bottles that don’t self-compost? The fast food salesman for using so much packaging? The retailer who supplied the plastic bag?
As much as the general public, and the environmentalists would like to blame the companies responsible for producing the goods, for the litter; we have to look in a different place.
Let me ask you a question. How many banana skins, or apple cores, do you find littered all over the street? How many times have you been for a walk in the park, and said “Look at all the orange peelings that people have dropped everywhere.”
Have you ever seen this in the city? Ok, maybe once or twice, but this is not something you see everywhere. Why? Maybe it’s because people don’t eat fruit outside, or maybe it’s because the people who eat oranges, and bananas, are more responsible people! Maybe they are from a different era, where dropping banana skins in the street, is not acceptable.
All of these arguments could be plausible, although I don’t think we’re really getting to the bottom of the problem; and indeed it is a problem now. Everywhere we look, in every country in the world, there is litter.
Some countries have less litter, because they impose an on the spot fine, something governments have resorted to, because it’s easier than finding the real reason behind it.
Litter is a sign that humans have been there. How many times do you walk through some area of natural beauty, and you see cigarette butts littered everywhere? The people who walked through smoking, were probably appreciating the scenery, as they dropped their cigarettes, or left their rubbish from their picnic by the side of the track. This was me, many years ago; appreciating nature, and ruining it at the same time, without so much as a thought that what I was doing was wrong.
How many people do you see flicking their cigarettes out of their car window as they drive along? Most of them. How many have ashtrays provided? All of them. I don’t think I have ever seen someone smoking inside their house, then opening the window, and throwing the butt outside in the street. No, even the most unthinking people, with no care for the world we live in, usually use ashtrays and empty them into the bin, to be disposed of correctly (if only to be buried in the ground at a landfill site).
Although some people throw apple cores, and the suchlike out of the car window, I have never seen someone throw an empty coffee cup out of the window. It’s not acceptable.
This leads us somewhere interesting, don’t you think? The definition of acceptable is “judged to be in conformity with approved usage.” Well, that doesn’t mean that littering is approved of, but we learn what acceptable behaviour is, by watching, and imitating others, and if we see enough people doing it in our social peer group, it becomes acceptable.
If your peer group contains car thieves, then stealing cars becomes acceptable to you, although it’s not accepted in wider society. If your peer group contains church going people you will most likely think that it is acceptable to go to church. For smokers, theirs is a large peer group; one that contains, smokers! And, if they see many smokers throwing cigarettes out the window it becomes acceptable behaviour for them as well.
If you see chewing gum on the pavement, you know that a large number of people already do it; it’s everywhere, same as takeaway containers and plastic bags. There is already a large amount of it littered around, so one more takeaway box isn’t going to hurt, is it? And anyway, you were drunk, and you don’t remember leaving it there, and someone will clean it up in the morning, and it wasn’t hurting anyone! We never see our individual actions as harmful.
You say: “It wasn’t affecting anyone.” You say: “I am a decent citizen, and anyway, I pay my taxes, and that includes paying for someone to clean the litter in the streets. The end.”
The other living creatures on the planet don’t really drop too much litter do they? Maybe a small amount of excretory waste from their meal the night before, but on the whole, I couldn’t really say I’ve noticed much litter left around the place from the birds, animals and fish in the sea, even when they die. Excretions return to the soil, and in death the body breaks down. They are part of nature and they return to nature. From them they supply other animals and insects with nutrients. Quite a nice little cycle, don’t you think?
In fact, you don’t really notice that animals and birds are there, do you? They just kind of fit in, quietly performing their daily tasks, without leaving a legacy of litter behind for a hundred years or more. Everything an animal uses is natural; everything comes from the natural world. There is nothing artificial used by animals. Why? Because they don’t have the skills, brainpower, or need, to make it. As the most intelligent living being on the planet, we do have the skills and brainpower to make artificial products; but do we “need” to make them?
We already know that an animal doesn’t need any more than he already has, but we are different. We have needs, desires, addictions, and wants. We have “needs” that cannot be satisfied by the natural world, so we have to fulfil them artificially. We have developed skills and machines that enable us to live more easily.
Let’s face it, life isn’t so difficult anymore; we no longer have to go out and hunt our food, we buy it in the supermarket, and we store it in the freezer for use sometime later.
Our ancestors never used to go shopping to the supermarket, had a takeaway, or chewed artificial gum! Why? Easy. They didn’t exist. But with the advent of the industrial revolution, came the invention of new types of synthetic material, large scale production techniques, and the ability to make new products that companies could sell to the general public on a massive scale.
Gone were the days of people using nature for the products they needed. Now they could get products they didn’t need and thereby activated a whole new pleasure area of the brain. The pleasure to get what ever you want whenever you wanted it even if you didn’t need it. As long as you had one thing – money.
And so it began. Companies started making products people wanted; not because the people needed them, but because someone from the company invented them, and they thought they would make money by selling them to everyone. “Hang on!” I hear you say, “there have been some marvellous inventions over the years; so many things to make our lives easier.”
Unfortunately, alongside this ability to mass produce things we wanted, liked, needed, desired, or craved, came a problem. They had to find a way to get it to us without the products becoming damaged. So they needed to invent packaging (any material used especially to protect something). This enabled goods to be manufactured in other countries and transported by rail or sea (or by plane or road now) and delivered to the retailer, in perfect condition for sale.
So let’s recap. We are interested only in litter, and we have looked at the most prevalent types of litter in our streets, rivers, and parks. They are cigarette butts, chewing gum, plastic bags, and takeaway containers. Whether you think chewing gum is pleasurable, or you enjoy eating kebabs or burgers, the fact exists that many people do. Why? Instant gratification.
“I am hungry.” I can eat a takeaway immediately and feel pleasure. “I need nicotine.” There are twenty shops that sell cigarettes. I can buy a pack and feel pleasure. “I want to buy products from the supermarket on my way home from work, but how will I carry them home?” They have bags available to make it easy. The fact is, whatever the product, and whatever the reason for buying it, if I can think of it, I can normally buy it within one kilometre of where I am standing. That is the modern world. That is mass manufacturing and global distribution. I want it now and I can get it now.
Every pleasure has a cost. The pleasure of instant gratification, is the packaging required, to get it to us in perfect condition.
But we still can’t blame the packaging, or the companies that make the products; even if we want to. They don’t force us to consume them, or drop the litter on the ground, do they? Of course, we’re very busy in our lives, aren’t we? So anything that makes our lives simpler, helps.. We are busy, we are always working, always doing something. We’re always on the go, always rushing somewhere. No time to stop, must dash, in a rush, can’t wait. It’s enough to drive you mad! So it’s no wonder we stop at the takeaway because we are hungry, chew gum or smoke cigarettes because we’re stressed.
Society made me drop it!
Could it be that because we are always preoccupied with something else that we don’t even consider that dropping litter is important?
Could it be that our busy lives take on more importance than disposing litter properly. What do you think?
“I’m walking along the street, and I’m hungry. I’ve had a busy day, and I got up at 5.30 am for a train to a customer. It’s 2.30 pm and I need something quickly. I buy a burger, unwrap it, and the mobile phone goes, “hello? Yeah, I’ll be there in four minutes.” Hands full, I quickly dispose of the most unimportant thing, the wrapper; it’s an important call.
I finish the burger, take out my cigarettes, and think what I’ll say at the meeting. The phone goes again. I finish my cigarette, and stamp it out on the pavement, whilst reaching for my gum (I don’t want the director to know that I smoke). As I approach the entrance to the office building, quickly think of my speech, and spit out the gum. It doesn’t look very professional to be seen chewing gum in a meeting…”
We’re not lazy, we’ve just got more important things to think about. Ourselves.
Now remember the animal, and the bird, and think of the fish. Do they need a cigarette to de-stress or chewing gum to freshen their breath? We need things we didn’t need before, things that are not for the benefit of the system.. We are now programmed for success, for stress, for making more money. And litter is our by-product.
“But hang on, I earn lots of money and I care about the environment and I always put my litter in the bin. I never throw it away in the street!”
Maybe you do, and your fellow city dwellers will thank you for it, as it makes the city look cleaner; and no one wants to live in a place full of litter. But even if we throw it in the bin, even when the street sweeper takes it away, and our streets look nice, it’s not the end.
Our cigarette butts. Our gum. Our plastic bags from our shopping. Our burger wrappers. They all go somewhere! They aren’t like the animals droppings. They don’t just wash away and return to nature, they stay, and stay, and stay, all around the world, just filling up giant holes in the ground.
Litter is not about putting your rubbish in the bin,
although it helps the place look nice.
It’s about what products are important,
what products you really need,
although you may not need them at all.
It’s about choosing products that have no packaging.
It’s about reviewing your lifestyle.
It’s stopping rushing, it’s about caring.
It’s about thinking about something other than yourself.
It’s about change.
Ultimately, it’s not about litter at all.
By alan macmillan orr
‘The Natural Mind – Waking Up’
2009
