Litter bugs

One of the things we instil in our children, as a duty to society, is respect for their environment. The dropping of litter has come to symbolize the frontline between those who care and those who couldn’t care less. The other day I saw a man casually discard a cigarette box as he walked along a pavement. I was following behind and I found myself compelled to pick the box up and reproach him about littering the streets. So I said “Excuse me, I think this is yours,’ holding the box up for all to see.

I was expecting a reaction somewhere between resentment, embarrassment and aggression, followed by the stock response “Don’t worry about it, that’s what street cleaners are paid for”. But no! Instead he looked at the box in a totally passive manner, smiled and said “Oh, that’s alright mate, it’s empty. Thanks anyway.” I was nonplussed. That one line said it all. He clearly had no conception whatsoever that dropping litter was anything to be ashamed of.

The reason why it didn’t even occur to him that he was being reprimanded was evidently that he had survived his thirty-odd years without anyone ever having told him that littering was a bad think. And that says a great deal about the sub-culture in which he exists. When you get populations with no regard or pride for their surroundings it tells you that their concerns are internalized and selfish. They have no sense of community and the wellbeing of their neighbourhood. Public space is not their concern, so it is treated with disregard and contempt. That is why littering stands for so much that can go wrong in modern civilization and why our children must by taught to think about the consequences of their actions, no matter how seemingly minor they may be.

By Gerard Cheshire