Monday Mix-up - Are you guilty of being a litterbug?

We went for an 18km cycle around our neighbourhood yesterday. If you can get past the nerves of being on a flimsy little bike while in very close proximity to extremely fast-moving cars who don't seem to see you, it's actually kind of fun seeing your neighbourhood up close and personal;) You see things you wouldn't usually see in car because you're literally moving too fast. Also, if you're in a car, it's usually because you are on your way to somewhere and NOT to sight see, so your attention is focused on the "getting there" part. If you're on a bike, it's probably because you WANT to enjoy the sights and sounds and breathe in the fresh air. (Well, as fresh as it can be with exhaust fumes all around you!)

We decided to do the same route we did about 3 weeks ago. The first time we did it I was more focused on where we were going and how much energy I'd need for the next hill. The second time we did it, I was comfortable with the route so I could actually focus on the world around me a bit more. Unfortunately, it wasn't all rosy. I was pretty shocked and appalled by the amount of litter there was lying on EVERY pavement, on every verge, in drains, in bushes; just EVERYWHERE.

When is this EVER acceptable?

There were coke bottles, tissues, cigarette boxes and wrappings, empty alcohol bottles, the silver bags you get inside boxes of wine, empty food containers, plastic cutlery, chip packets, cigarette butts, chewing gum and empty cold drink cans and bottles everywhere. What made it even worse is that I saw birds pecking at some of the food containers. Some might say that it's helping to feed them. I'd say try again. A bird's natural food is NOT potato chips or french fries. It's certainly not plastic.

Litter is unsightly, there's no question. It can take a beautiful landscape and make it look ugly. It can completely change our perception of a place. If you drive down a street that is littered with junk, it tends to make us have a lower opinion of that area. But the issue with litter is so much bigger than the fact that it is unsightly. The issue is what it does to the wildlife that shares our space. Out of all the rubbish they find on the ground, animals don't really know what's safe to eat and what isn't. If it smells funny to them they'll generally avoid it but most of them are curious and probably hungry. You'd be surprised how many animals are found with stomachs filled with plastic and other junk. The video below can attest to that. It's truly heartbreaking.

The problem with litter is that it tends to not just stay in one spot. Whether it is moved by a car, or the wind, or rain, or just kicked by a person walking past it, it is eventually going to find its way to a water outlet of some kind; usually a storm drain. Where do those storm drains lead to? Usually a river or a stream. Those, in turn, lead to the oceans. It's basic geography. Unless someone actually picks up that piece of rubbish and places it in a bin, it is going to stay in the environment and it is going to end up being destructive in some way.

How is it destructive? I'll give you an idea:

Plastic water bottles are made of (ironically) completely recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics. The problem with PETs is that they don't biodegrade, they photodegrade. This means that they break down into smaller fragments of plastic over time instead of breaking down into simpler compounds like most other things do. The photo degradation of plastic makes billions of smaller toxic pieces of plastic which get eaten by all manner of marine life, poisoning them or leading to deadly blockages in their digestive systems. To make it worse, those smaller pieces of plastic are also able to absorb toxins that will, in turn, pollute our waterways, contaminate our soil, and sicken animals (which we then eat). Plastic waste also absorbs organic pollutants like BPA and PCBs. They will take CENTURIES to decompose while they sit in landfills leeching poison into the environment like billions of little environmentally poisonous time bombs.

Plastic bottles and plastic bags are the most common form of pollution found on beaches and in oceans. Every square mile (2.6km squared) of ocean has over 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in it! 10% of the plastic manufactured worldwide ends up in the ocean, the bulk of it settling on the ocean floor where it will never degrade.

Here is a frightening fact: For every 10 bottles of water we drink, only 2 bottles end up in a recycle bin. In America, the national recycle rate for PETs is only 23 percent. That means they throw 38 BILLION water bottles into landfills every year. If those bottles were recycled they could be re-used as carpeting, synthetic decking playground apparatus and new bottles and containers. We technically shouldn't need to be making MORE plastic. It should just go back into the cycle and be used again and again but that's NOT what's happening.

Here are some frightening statistics that apply to America ALONE:

Percent of people who have admitted to littering in the past 5 years	75%
Percent of all littered items that are cigarette butts	50%
Total amount of litter that is dumped into the ocean every year	9 billion tons
Total annual amount spent on cleaning up litter yearly	$ll.5 billion
Average amount of steps a person will hold a piece of trash before they litter	12 steps
Total amount of trash generated each year in the U.S.	250 million

It boggles my brain that people can have such blatant and callous disregard for the environment. That's effectively what their laziness comes down to. Just because you aren't one of those people who throw their rubbish out of a car window doesn't absolve you either unfortunately. We live in a complex that has about 40 houses in it. Recently, Pick-it-up started giving us recycling bags and offering to pick up all our recycling for free. I had been paying a company to do it for several years before this, so I was very excited to hear about this initiative. Do you know that, out of all of those houses, the MOST recycling bags I have EVER seen placed outside to be collected, is 5? And 2 of those of ours!! I refuse to believe that every other house that isn't putting out recycling bags, isn't using plastic, aluminium, paper or glass...

The actual rubbish that gets thrown away in our house doesn't even fill a quarter of our rubbish bin. We have a compost heap which swallows a large amount of biodegradable rubbish and we recycle ALL of our plastic, glass, aluminium and paper. We fill 1 or 2 recycling bags a week depending on what we do and, yes, if we were to put those in our rubbish bin it would be filled to overflowing but we don't. We put those recycling bags out for Pick-it-up to take and recycle. The actual rubbish we throw out amounts to food scrapings off a dinner plate and maybe some meat cuttings from dinner preparations and old cat litter. That's it.

My friends used to make fun of me because I used to get so upset if they threw chewing gum out of the car window. I used to make them keep it to throw away properly. Seriously? Why is it so hard to understand that THAT is littering? It's a foreign object going into the environment. It's most definitely littering. So is throwing a cigarette butt out of a car window. All so that YOU won't have a car that smells like an ashtray. While some poor bird is going to pick it up thinking it's food. Think further than your own world. The world is bigger than just you. Littering is not limited to a certain class, population group, race or age. I have seen people, from 5 year old kids, to middle class young adults, to wealthy senior citizens, throwing rubbish on a floor. I wonder who they think will clean up after them? Are we so self-entitled that we think the world is there as OUR own personal rubbish bin?

It's time to start seeing the world past our own noses. Everything we do has a consequence. This is one area we can literally make a huge difference. I think it's time we all make a start.