Littering

We are into our second year farming vacant lots in North St. Louis City. A big part of our job description: picking up trash. Lots of it. We do a little bit every day, and carve out a chunk of time every week to fill up two large rolling toters.

Recently, while collecting the most recent beer cans, blunt wrappers, and fast food containers, I began thinking of the people who just threw this all on the ground. We are on a dead end street, so likely the litterer is walking by this daily. Folks drinking and playing dominoes in the park all day just stack garbage about them. Black plastic bags from the quick mart end up in our trees, scaring the chickens when the wind blows.

I was trying to understand why littering is so popular in our neighborhood. One thing that came to mind is when I was a child, I would do stupid things to leave my mark. Leaving graffiti on publicly visible items, burning things. I went through a period where I would glue coins to the ground. Maybe trashing your environment is a sort of vandalism, or simply making sure the world knows you’re present?

More than anything, I was saddened by what it seems to say about the individuals who do this. This is our home. This is where the same neighbors live, walk their dogs, party, and run to catch the bus. Why do you want to literally trudge through your own filth on a daily basis? I think it has to be a self-efficacy and self-esteem issue; no one is forcing anyone live in squalor, littering is a willful act of junking your own surroundings. Maybe it’s a chicken and egg thing, where the presence of rubbish makes people feel lower and also more likely to follow along, adding to the problem. Maybe just enough people committing to keeping things nice will create a positive force in the other direction, lifting spirits along the way.