CHOICES SHAPE YOUR FUTURE
By Judith Ashton
Last week, I went for a walk in the countryside and because I always see other people’s rubbish scattered along the way, I took a plastic glove and a large black sack.
There were plastic bottles and sweet wrappers tucked beneath hedges, takeaway containers abandoned beside a gate, cans, crisp and cigarette packets thrown in ditches, plus two dirty nappies on the roadside. What kind of person thinks it’s OK to dump their rubbish like this?
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about littering is that it says something about how little some people value themselves, as well as the world around them. I can only imagine that these litter bugs are people who don’t know how to care for themselves… many are smokers, some drink fizzy cans, others eat processed food and sweets and have zero respect for others.
We often speak about respecting ourselves, respecting other people and respecting our environment, yet these three things are closely connected. A person who treats the countryside as a giant bin is demonstrating a profound lack of respect, not only for nature but for the community and for those who will eventually have to clean up after them. All the litter I saw was simply chucked out or dumped by a thoughtless individual who could just as easily have put it in a bin; a tiny act of responsibility, requiring very little effort.
Perhaps, responsibility is at the heart of the matter. Responsible people do not leave rubbish. Irresponsible, immature, disrespectful people do.
“Leave no trace” is a motto of many music festivals, (I can’t imagine the mess after Electric Picnic”!) and nature lovers. Our precious countryside isn’t a rubbish dump. It’s alive. Hedgerows provide shelter for birds and small mammals. Streams and rivers support insects, fish and other wildlife. Fields feed animals and people. Trees clean the air, store carbon and provide homes for countless creatures. Even the apparently insignificant grassy patch beside a country road is part of a much larger ecosystem.
Discarded plastic bottles or an empty can may seem harmless and inconsequential. However, rubbish rarely remains where it is dumped. Rain carries waste into drains and waterways. Wind blows plastics into fields and hedges. Animals can become trapped in discarded packaging or mistake some rubbish for food. Plastic breaks down into micro particles, remains in the environment for years eventually entering our soil, water and possibly our bodies.
Sadly, we live in a world where something’s bought, eaten, and then chucked away. But there is no magic place called “away”. When something’s thrown out of a car window or dropped, it simply goes somewhere else. Someone, somewhere, deals with it. Possibly, a council worker, a volunteer, a neighbour or the farmer who discovers a fly-tip on their land. Sometimes it is an animal that pays the price.
How ironic! People drive around in expensive cars, expensive clothes, take expensive holidays etc while apparently thinking nothing of their surroundings. Yet Nature is the greatest treasure we have; priceless and breath-takingly beautiful; the stage upon which we all exist. We are temporary visitors here, with a responsibility to leave these places at least as beautiful as we find them.
We teach children to look after the environment and yet many adults seem not to care.
Respect for the planet can begin with something as simple as picking up our own rubbish. Better still, if we see a piece of litter that someone else has left behind and it is safe to do so, we can pick that up too. One bottle, one can, one wrapper at a time.
Our countryside is not somebody else’s responsibility. It belongs to all of us, and ultimately to those who come after us.
Perhaps the next time you stand beneath a great old tree, walk beside a river or look across an incredible view, you might pause and remember that we are mere guests in a remarkable living, breathing world. The least we can do as guests is not leave our rubbish all over the place.
Many people walk in the countryside to relax, and it’s in nature that we are reminded that our world is indeed a beautiful place, it’s the only true home we all have and we need to respect it.
Respect for the earth begins with respect for the place we stand. And sometimes, the smallest act of decency is simply this: take every bit of your rubbish home with you.
Listen: Arlo Guthrie’s famous song about littering: “Alice’s Restaurant”
