Oh brother are you gonna leave me wasting away
On the streets of Philadelphia
- Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Philadelphia
The picture above shows a very common sight in my neighborhood: litter. For whatever reason, there are some people who live near me that think that the streets of Philadelphia is a trash bin. Complaining to the Department of Streets resulted in me getting bumped from Department of Its-not-our-responsibility to the Department of Its-Not-our-Responsibility-Either. And walking amongst trash strewn all over the places can get a person down. So there is a group of us litter haters who have decided that we will pick up the trash that others leave on the Streets of Philadelphia. This is problematic for me in one regard: it interferes with my 90% emission reduction project - it adds to the garbage I have to take out. Which is annoying because I finally have managed to get it down to about 2 lbs/week (most of it is now composted).
Anyway, but now I don’t have to feel so bad because of #6 on this list: “Act like a considerate citizen of the world, and you’ll boost your self-esteem.” After picking up everyone’s litter over the weekend on my little street my husband and I kept patting ourselves on the back over how beautiful we singlehandedly had made our street look. So the trash pickup did give us a bit of a happiness boost. However…I doubt picking up chicken bones (also something that is frequently found littered everywhere) would result in that same boost. Perhaps this is how we start to realize the benefits of having stray cats and miscellaneous rodents that inhabit our fine neighborhood.
