The world is our ashtray and garbage dump!
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| I think this was at Sam's Club. |
These
photographs are scenes I have observed all over the place, anywhere we
have lived. They are the "poster children" for the attitudes of so many
people in America that it has become necessary for entire crews of
people to be tasked with removing the garbage that is brazenly thrown
out of car windows into parking lots, along highways, and into the
landscaping of every major shopping center, hospital, industrial
complex, strip mall, church, school and apartment complex.
If you guessed that my "Pet Peve of the Week" is littering, you
would be correct. What is it that makes people think that they have the
right to throw their refuse out into the world for someone else to deal
with? Is this fallout from growing up in a household where kids were
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| I think this was at Fry's Food Store. |
not made to do any chores,
didn't have to clean up after themselves or were never given any
responsibility? Perhaps. My generation was raised in homes where
personal responsibility WAS taught! But yet I see people of all ages -
including baby boomers and fifty-something's as well as Generation X and
Generation Y People and (still not an official name) Generation Z
Kiddo's - violating the law by discarding their trash in public places.
As a society, have we become so careless about other people's property
that we feel entitled to do this? Or is it the minority of individuals,
doing it at such a prolific rate
that it just SEEMS to me like "everyone is doing it"?
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| Dreamstime Stock Photo |
Smokers are, in my opinion, among the worst of these offenders. Somehow they
reason that it is OK to make the great outdoors their ash tray. The
highways and streets of America are their butt can. At night I see the
dim glow of a cigarette butt flicked out the window of the car ahead of
me and witness the sparkle of tobacco cinders that scatter along the
pavement before dying out. "Someone has to pick that up, you (expletive
deleted)!", I find myself thinking. Of course there are the
"responsible" drivers who save the product of their disgusting habit
in the ashtray provided by auto makers, only to dump it out in the
parking lot of their local Wal-Mart, Kroger, Piggly-Wigly or Costco
Club. Some child has to walk by the car of this person and see that!
What kind of impression is that going to leave? What lesson will that
teach?
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| Outside a Circle K Store on Deer Valley. |
I wish there was a way that we could all watch out for these
offenders and call them out on it, but we seldom ever see it actually
happening. I am not sure what it would look like and how it would work,
but I do think something needs to be done to make the act of littering
SO unacceptable that nobody does it any more.
How about you? Any ideas?
I am not some "rabid, nutso tree hugging environmentalist", and I
realize that in the grand scheme of things this is probably not going to
matter much during this brief blip on the screen that my lifetime
represents in comparison to eternity, but It just grinds me that SO MANY
people feel that making messes for someone else to clean up is somehow
"OK". The real bottom line is this: Littering is bad. Not littering is
good. I can back that up with the bible: "Therefore, to him who knows to
do good and does not do it, to him it is sin." - James 4:17, New King
James Version (NKJV)
PHOTO
LOCATIONS: 1st Photo: Sam's Club Parking Lot, Glendale, AZ. | 2nd
Photo: Frys Food Store Parking Lot, Glendale, AZ | 3rd Photo: Dreamstime
Stock Photo | 4th Photo: Circle K Parking Lot, 27th Avenue & Deer
Valley Road, Phoenix
