end of the year -- pick up your trash
well, it's been just over a year since i started this blog, and i've been pretty happy overall with the amount of participation from others, and the amount of little silly neighborhood things that i've been able to document. it's time for me to pack up and head to the airport in a few hours, so i'm going to sign off for 2007 and say "see you in '08!"
a final thought though:
- garbage in the neighborhood. i know it's such a little thing, but keeping our streets clean is, in my mind, the only outward difference between our little part of the city (bloomingdale, eckington, ledroit, shaw) and some of the "fancier" neighborhoods further west.
it's not difficult, when walking along, to pick up the few pieces of trash you might see on the sidewalk along the block. there are trash cans on almost every corner in the neighborhood, and you can deposit the detritus you find in those cans without having to carry things too far.
there are three kinds of people in the neighborhood by this calculus:
1) those who drop garbage on the street. these people have no respect for the neighborhood. they suck, period.
2) those who see it and do nothing. hey, it's your neighborhood. even though it isn't your trash, you should have pride in the area and do what you can to help.
3) those who pick things up. of course i'm in this group, and i'm bragging about it. go us!
finding tallboys and chip bags on the street sucks....people shouldn't be animals with their droppings (anyone ever heard the phrase "don't shit where you eat"?). i wish there was a way to shame those people into cleaning up after themselves, but generally, they don't care about themselves, other people, or anything else, so there's really nothing you can do but provide garbage cans and hope that they use them. as for everyone else, keep fighting the good fight, and have a happy new year.
adios (for now)....
8 comments:
I feel like even if the trash makes it into a trash can, there is no guarantee that it won't be back on the street.
I've seen the midnight crews that come along and empty the public trash cans and they move those (often over-flowing) trash cans with the delicate touch of a 747.
And the guys that empty the residential trash cans are in the same boat. Trash overflows, trash winds up on the street.
Not to piss on your parade, but it is more than just residents that need to clean up our act.
Pigs literally shit where they eat.
Time for the pigs to find a new home.
ALL the discarded glass would disappear overnight if DC had a bottle bill. Too bad the beverage lobby spends tens of millions to shoot it down whenever it goes before the Council.
Back in the day, dad and I would troll around neighborhoods looking for discarded aluminum cans and take them to the recycling station in Beltsville. A months worth of collecting would net him $50-75. Good beer money back then, but it wouldn't pay for a Friday night binge at the more chichi places downtown.
Bottles and cans are one thing, but freaking discarded chicken bones are fuggin nasty. Rats just live for that s**t. Maybe DC needs a good plague outbreak for it to clean up its act?
i hear you about the bottle deposit law, monkey. we had one where i grew up in michigan, and you NEVER found stuff like that lying around (of course, there's plenty of other garbage to clutter up michigan's pleasant peninsulas...).
i was picking up some discarded tall-boys the other day when some guys drinking on a front stoop asked me what i was going to do with the cans. i told them, "throw them in the garbage," and they asked if they could have them. i don't know if they were going to take them in to get money off the scrap, or if they were simply looking for an extra sip of beer...
1. Problems with the quality of trash pickup have so little impact in terms of the overall program that it doesn't even register.
2. I have done experiments with this and regular maintenance of blocks does reduce overall litter.
3. A bottle bill was attempted in 1988. The anti forces made it into a racial issue and recruited the black churches, among other stakeholders, in their successful campaign to defeat the bill. The DC Environmental Network is still interested in this, but it would still be a tough fight, given the racial politics still very extant and visible in the city.
I meant referendum. DC City Council could probably legally enact such a law, but is still controlled by big(ger) business so it would be a struggle.
Every election season, if you read the council/ANC candidates promo literature, they ALL include a blurb about how they're in favor of affordable housing, more police, AND A BOTTLE BILL. Yet NONE of them actually step up to the plate and do anything about it.
I don't get the black churches' rationale. Are they in FAVOR of broken glass in the street? Or is cleaning up the street "acting white?" Or is a bottle bill part of a larger conspiracy to destroy the black race?
"yes" (LOL)
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