Through out our walk today, and the past few days, I have noticed how much trash is in places that it does not belong.
On our first ramble I noticed a television behind Watson Hall. On Saturday I was driving off campus and as someone walked across the street an empty coffee cup fell from her bag, we stopped the car for her to go back and grab it but she turned around then looked at it and kept walking. Today on our walk I saw a sink to the left of the abandoned stone staircase. When we walked through the brush and came to the dam, I saw styrofoam cups, beer cans and overflowing trash bags scattering the tree line.
Why is it that we litter? The girl with the coffee cup and the television and sink owners were clearly polluting intentionally but why? Is it because we think that someone else will clean it up because we are just too lazy? Do we think that it won’t have an affect? Maybe we think that nature will just make a comeback and just figure out how to deal with it.
Well, that trash does have an effect. Take a look at this video I saw on Facebook over the summer of a sea turtle who was affected by someone’s decision to litter.
Emily, these are interesting observations, and they make me think of something that has come up in conversations about recycling on campus. I believe often times people think “ehh, there are no trashcans around and I don’t want to carry this garbage around. If I just throw this one thing in the grass it won’t be a big deal”. When I see garbage laying about that is usually how I figure it got there. This leads me to think littering may partially be an issue due to the lack of accessibility to trash receptacles and laziness. In discussions about recycling on campus this is the same sort of problem we think we are seeing. We have noticed that not every trashcan can is accompanied by a recycling bin, or that there may only be paper or plastic recycling in certain locations, and we feel like this results in a lack of accessibility and some laziness that prevents successful recycling on this campus. While this is just an idea for why we see things like littering or recyclables in trash bins, I think better distribution of bins in areas with littering issues and if people were willing to hang on to trash until they reach a bin we might see an improvement with this issue.
Thank you for your insight Ginny! I actually just read The Lafayette’s article on recycling today. The article discusses the research Professor Nicodemus’ and her class did on recycling systems at Laf. Their comments were so interesting and really seemed to align with your above comments. Having more trashcans and recycling bins sounds like a great idea but do you think that those cans would ruin the view of nature? Eh on second thought I think I would prefer trashcans and recycling bins over trash.