Litter is lame! Happy No-Trash May!

I can't believe it's May already! 2009 is flying by. The fact that we have assigned a different challenge to each month probably has something to do with it. As the end of each month approaches, I start thinking about what I have to do for the next month. In most cases so far, I'm looking forward to the next challenge. May is no exception, but I must say, this task is rather daunting. No trash?! Eek!

I really really liked April. It's amazingly gross how much trash there is, and as Danne said in her most recent post, once you start looking for trash, you realize it's everyyyyywhere! I feel really awful if I pass by a piece of litter without picking it up, and this is definitely a habit I will keep up from now on. Yesterday, for the last day in April, I went to the beach in Southie and picked up as much trash as I could within a 2 block stretch. I set out to go for a long walk and pick up trash along the way, but there was so much litter, I needed to narrow my scope. As is the case pretty much everywhere I've been picking trash, the most common items were water bottles, coffee cups, beer cans, cigarette packs, scratch tickets, and lids. So many damn lids. Lids to coffee cups, soda cups, and plastic bottles. If people would only drink coffee and water out of reusable containers, we would have so much less litter.

Littering is a matter of laziness and thoughtlessness. People who litter do so because it appears to be easier to drop trash on the ground than to wait and put it in a trashcan. Or they don't want to make a mess in their car so they make a mess in the environment instead. They don't think about the consequences. I wish there was a way to make everyone collectively realize that littering is a big deal, it's harmful, and it's lame. You are a huge loser and everyone looks upon you with disdain if you litter. I mean, do these people do the same thing in their houses? Shit, the trashcan is all the way in the kitchen. I'll just drop this Dunkies cup here on the floor.

The best way to combat litter in an immediate way is to place more trashcans around the city. There's a park near my house that has only one trashcan at the far corner of it, so of course people don't want to walk across the park to throw things away. The cleanest areas of the city are the ones that have trashcans on every block (and probably also have hired help sweeping up trash). Adding trashcans would help with the grossest trash, by far, the poop bags. Ya know, plastic bags with dog poop inside? Ughhhh sick! That plastic bag is preserving that poop. The poop would be much better off in the open air where it could disintegrate and eventually wash away or decompose into the ground. If there were more trashcans, people wouldn't have to walk as far with a bag of poop in their hand, and they'd be less likely to leave it on the ground. Think about all of those poop bags out there on sidewalks and in landfills. Sick. Maybe when someone buys a dog, that scenario should be brought up. "Tell me, what would you do in this situation? Your dog shits on the sidewalk, and there are no trashcans in sight."

Sorry I just complained about dog poop for so long.

So now it's May! I'll be grocery shopping mostly at the Harvest Coop in Central Square, and I've already started a little compost pot in my kitchen (my roommates are using it as well, which is awesome). I have to figure out what the heck to do with the food scraps after that point, though. I don't have a yard for a compost bin. Does anyone have any suggestions?