Print PDF
Favorite
Email
Step 2Find a moment to pause
There are some good souls who actually go out on the weekends or every morning and pick up trash. I have a friend who has done this in his neighborhood, going into neighbors' backyards with a trash bag and a sharp stick. And I used to see a lot of older people out with brooms sweeping their stoop and sidewalk in the mornings when I lived in Brooklyn.
Realistically, most of us aren't that motivated. It's much more likely that we have a very narrow window for picking up trash, when we're walking back into our buildings on the way home from work or a weekend errand. I find that the best time for me is on my way home from work; I usually don't have too many things in my hand, and I'm on my way to a place that definitely has a trash can. I've also occasionally found that it's easy to pick up less disgusting items when I'm on my way in or out from an errand on the weekend. I also often pick up paper trash, like door handle ads, on my way home from my daily run.
You should look for these occasions and remind yourself to stop for a second and pick up trash. I don't stop all the time; what usually gets me to pause is when I see street trash that just can't be ignored. Today I saw an unusually bad build up of various kinds of trash. So I stopped.
At a previous home, I would occasionally collect all of the paper ads on the stairs, porch and sidewalk of the house next to me after the elderly woman who lived there moved out and it went up for sale. It would often just be ridiculous looking, and it took less than a minute to collect all of the trash; I disposed of them in the trash can on the corner.
I also found that I had to do a lot of trash pick up last spring when there was a competitive election in my neighborhood. One of the candidates made it a habit to rip off all of the other candidate's door handle ads in the neighborhood and leave them scrunched up in odd places around my building. My recycling output increased a lot in the week leading up to the election.
Realistically, most of us aren't that motivated. It's much more likely that we have a very narrow window for picking up trash, when we're walking back into our buildings on the way home from work or a weekend errand. I find that the best time for me is on my way home from work; I usually don't have too many things in my hand, and I'm on my way to a place that definitely has a trash can. I've also occasionally found that it's easy to pick up less disgusting items when I'm on my way in or out from an errand on the weekend. I also often pick up paper trash, like door handle ads, on my way home from my daily run.
You should look for these occasions and remind yourself to stop for a second and pick up trash. I don't stop all the time; what usually gets me to pause is when I see street trash that just can't be ignored. Today I saw an unusually bad build up of various kinds of trash. So I stopped.
At a previous home, I would occasionally collect all of the paper ads on the stairs, porch and sidewalk of the house next to me after the elderly woman who lived there moved out and it went up for sale. It would often just be ridiculous looking, and it took less than a minute to collect all of the trash; I disposed of them in the trash can on the corner.
I also found that I had to do a lot of trash pick up last spring when there was a competitive election in my neighborhood. One of the candidates made it a habit to rip off all of the other candidate's door handle ads in the neighborhood and leave them scrunched up in odd places around my building. My recycling output increased a lot in the week leading up to the election.
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
 |
Add Comment
|
