Monday, July 24
When did littering get cool again like what the hell.
Now its plausible that I have only noticed this because I have started noticing it and it has been problem basically forever and never ebbed in its severity but it certainly FEELS like littering - whole ass bags of fast food on the highway littering - is a choice people are making now and that fuckin stinks? Again, I will try and apply some analysis to how and why this might be happening but the initial shock of the notice is… a lot. I was under the impression that we had reached a cultural point where we just did not do that. You threw it out, whatever it was. It most certainly did not go on the floor, or the earth, or the side of the road at high velocity.
I started really noticing it at the on ramp to the Kensington Expressway from Suffolk in the city last spring. It was a lot of loose debris of what you might expect from your imagination of roadside litter. Just a lot of paper and food waste laying about strung over the distance of the whole ramp. It was the kind of placement of debris that, like, it only gets there if it goes out a car window. The wind isn't carrying it up there, and pedestrians aren't going up the ramp. The litter came from inside a car and it went out as people drove up it. Why there? How long did it take for all of it to pile up? Was it a lot all at once? And again, it was a lot. I saw someone dump half a cup of iced coffee straight up out their car door at a red light cup and all. It was up and down Elmwood Ave while walking just south of the village. It is noticeable.
The thing is I've taken a bunch of road trips in my life as a kid and as an adult. Everyone produces waste in a car it just happens. Not fucking once did I think to throw it out the window. My grandfather had a bag in the car for garbage, always. So we had a norm in my family extending to my siblings and cousins that we just don't litter. You found a trash can. Far as I could tell, so did everyone else I knew. I can't remember my friends doing it growing up. None of my friends do it now. It would be such a violation of norms that if I saw someone I knew do it I would say something. IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING but for slob-like behavior. This is how norms work! My norms were set from family yes, but also media and school. Sesame Street famously has a character that resides in a trash can. We were talking about litter and not to do it.
By that logic of "Litter is a violation of norms set by the community and the family" then it stands to reason that people littering either never had the norm or are just telling it to fuck off, and again, I saw this as so ubiquitous that I can't imagine anyone being raised with "yeah sure just throw it on the ground who gives a shit." Someone has to be, or someone has to be so alienated from it that they are consciously choosing to ignore it.
Now what I might be noticing is the immense amount of work it takes to keep ourselves clean, and what happens if that effort gives way just slightly. Maybe it wasn't as common not to litter as I thought. Maybe my world is just small. Maybe no one has the time to
help with it anymore. Maybe we aren't assigning people to the task of cleaning anymore.
Ok so you have a bag of food waste that you just do not want to carry. Great hope you are satiated. So where is the trash? Maybe you are in a neighborhood that doesn't have public waste container. I saw trash cans on Elmwood. Mind you they weren't on every corner so it was on my walk where I found it but it WAS there. So was it there wasn't a trash can within ten feet so on the ground it goes? What if you are walking and there is no trash can to be found anywhere. Maybe you should just TAKE IT WITH YOU and throw it out at home. Trash cans in the city are lined up against every house. You probably pass fifty wherever you are walking or biking to Im trying to find a way to where littering is the reasonable choice to a decent person because of the inability to access anywhere to dump what they have. The litter isn't even The Heavy Stuff that you absolutely do NOT want on your person. It isn't human biological waste. It's a wrapper. It's a cup. It's something that would've made it to a proper place if someone wanted to.
Am I crazy? Is this a thing as always or am I just noticing, now, that what felt like a uniform, completely and totally agreed upon norm not to litter is no longer agreed upon. Is this a part of a Bigger Narrative? A lot of our norms seem to end up along the side of the road now, right next to the biggie bag. Sucks, man.