This is one of my things. I walk my rescue pupper (1 year as of September 31, 2021) and we pick up litter and recycle whatever we can scavenge.
I’ve always picked up, and even before him I would do so, but since this past year we really upped the game.
We pick up two bags of trash to a kitchen size bag of trash each walk at least once a day, sometimes twice a day depending if I choose the beaches around the island or highway 64.
There is an unforgivable amount of trash for an island that is 2 miles by 8 miles, but with the highway and the waterways and the visitor inviting beaches and the boaters, it is inevitable.
Humans mean litter.
The grocery bag above is one of three I found on my walk and used to bag other litter.
The worst of it is the intentional litter: the 12 pack of cans shoved in a stump, the dog poo bags flung into the vines along the paths, the cigarette butts left in parking lots and flicked out of windows and off boats that all end up in the water and wash up on the beaches. (I hate people that do that. Grow a prefrontal cortex.)
This is compounded by the loose trash flying out of trailers, truck beds, and maybe even the garbage trucks.
I love where I live, and I’ve seen every place I live abused by people and their behavior and the way my local governments operate: trash is not addressed on the daily basis that is needed to keep the area clean.
Below are modest images of the surrounding beauty in my area. It is wonderful place to live with forests and waterways and skies that just vault and go on forever. We have migratory birds. We have a reserve full of owls, wolves, bears, and alligators. Yes, alligators are awesome. Even them. It’s just all the things, all the nature. The wildflowers. The mist and the fog. The stars.
If you had a trash bag in your yard, wouldn’t you clean it up?
So why is it so hard to walk down to a ditch by a road and pick up? Pick up at the stop sign on your street? Along the bend in your road?
And why is it so easy and acceptable to just be assholes? Why are people comfortable throwing beer cans and bottles into the reeds and out the windows. Why are people such fucking jerks? Flicking cigarette butts out the windows driving down the road.
And what are people doing smoking?! Did you miss the memo that they upped the nicotine to make you more addicted and used pesticides and chemicals linked to cancer? Documented. They intentionally used cartoon characters to pimp their product to help indoctrinate children and make themselves look more nonthreatening.
FYI: Cigarettes have plastic in them – the filter tip is plastic fibers they will take decades to disintegrate.
And I have to say, to those that think banning some plastics like plastic bags, is wrong, they are wrong. They couldn’t be more wrong.
People get excited making a bench out of plastic bags collected (THAT WOULD BE RECYCLED NORMALLY AT THE GROCERY STORE HELLO), but where are they unwrapping the plastic in the reeds and roots of trees? in the vines and bushes? Where are their eyes on all the UNRECYCLABLE ONE USE PLASTICS IN THEIR COMMUNITY?
They are wining and blaming and complaining like dogooders do. They are wonderful The rest of us are the problem.
I get a garbage bag of trash each day. All I have to do is go where people go. And then I still find trash in the National Park as well. The wind and water carry along on their currents to our location. I have plastic that has locations on it from the next state over – ice bags.
It’s frustrating to witness. And I don’t know what else to do but pick up what I can and just walk on. I take pics and videos and share. I keep a folder. I’m considering keeping an excel detailing the items and amount and date. To what end?
Why bother?
Trash is a way of life for Americans. To those the world over. We are given so much trash just in packaging that we are overburdened and then we turn on each other because we want to deny that no one could handle this big of a problem.
So it comes down to manufacturing producing the packaging and convenience stores with single use plastics for food items.
But it is culture too. How do you change the culture? How do you shake up the manufactures? These are impossible things.
And the only way it ever gets addressed is in two ways: 1) some feminine powerless group does something and gets some PR on social media or local paper for being do gooders for their annual haul or 2) the problem is so awful that it can’t be denied or ignored.
I wish more people cared about nature and animals. I wish men didn’t drive trucks and boats and toss trash out. I wish our local government had a deep commitment to cleaning up litter. I wish children were raised to be more connected to the earth.
I walk every day on my island. I’m only making a small impact if any at all. Two grocery bags of trash up to a trash bag haul.
Cans. Bottles. Cigarette butts. Plastic bags. Styrofoam. Straws. Packaging materials. Fast food bags. Bottles. Dog bags. Ropes. Tarps. Clothes. Diapers. (yes, diapers).
I do it because I love nature. I don’t subscribe to a higher power than the natural forces that make up the earth and all the celestial bodies and the Universe. Science. Math. And some mysteries. I believe this is it, this is what we have, we came from the earth, we will return to it, and wouldn’t we then think of it as life giving and want to care and respect it. The planet is our home.
I wish I had a fix. I wish I had a solution. The world is being trashed by us. And we are by and large not behaving as if we are connected or part of the earth, but are somehow beholden to fairytales, myths, folklore, and just absolute lies.
The human race needs to wake up, become reasonable and rational and take accountability.
No one is coming to save us and wash this away.
It’s us. We are it. We are the makers of all the mistakes and problems.
Anything less than a collective rational, reasonable resolve to make things better is not going to work.
What I am doing probably doesn’t matter.
It probably isn’t making a difference or an impact.
Not in todays anti-nature anti-reason anti-responsibility culture.
Dawn Scribbled to the End 