philosophy
As I’ve been thinking about littering lately, I’m drawn into remembering my own bad public choices and a thought experiment on how far I would go to make the ‘right’ choice.
We’ve all heard of shopping cart return as being a litmus for good human being. Whether you agree with the theory or not, I think it’s interesting to think about how far someone would go to return a cart. I’ve seen carts stuck one car stall away on a median, not returned. So obviously some people have a very low floor to the amount of inconvenience they’re willing to tolerate to make the ‘right choice.’
I’m a cart returner, even before this became a meme. I’ve been to a place with cart returns only in the front of the shop, and had to rumble my cart all the way from the back of the lot to take it back. But I enjoy walking, so it wasn’t a huge burden to me. There was one time I didn’t return my cart—my then-two-month-old was wailing bloody murder. I was stressed. I couldn’t just slam the car door on her and leave her there to scream while I walked my cart across the lot. I felt bad, but I left it. The cart return was just too far and I couldn’t leave her. My mother heart wouldn’t let me.
So there’s some point between one parking space away and infinite parking spots away that you and I won’t return the cart, and compounding factors such as disability and wailing babies that shorten the distance we’re willing to walk. If I had a disability, I’d only be willing to walk so far or tolerate so much pain before I would walk away from my cart.
In the context of littering, there is an inconvenience factor as well. How heavy is the trash? How much of it is there? Can you carry it all? Has your bag ripped and you have nowhere to put it? How stinky or gross is it? How far away is a receptacle? How expensive is this to dispose?
This is harder to measure. What do you do about your dog’s diarrhea at the park? How are you supposed to pick that up with a doggy bag? Your child throws a shoe out the window on the highway and now it’s unsafe to retrieve it. etc. etc.
When I backpacked through Yosemite, you have to put all your food into a heavy bear canister that blocks out food smells and is impossible for bears to open, discouraging bears from interacting with humans on the trail. You’re also supposed to pack out your poop in a bear canister. (Not the same one I hope!!) This is a high level of inconvenience. Two heavy bear canisters to tote. Handling of human feces. The whole thing is gross. How many backpackers actually follow through and pack out their human waste?
Outside of hippy-dippy-love-mother-nature-connection-to-the-universe education, which I think everyone needs and inspires an aversion to littering, we need to lower the barriers to the proper disposal of trash. Does that mean more garbage cans in public spaces, free mattress drop off at the dump so that they stop ending up on the side of the road, and maybe free poop canister rentals at Yosemite?
The answers to this question are gross and messy. No one wants the almighty tax-payer-dollar to go toward disposing of your cranky neighbors broken fridge, but if the other option is having even more tax payer dollars go to picking its smashed pieces off the side of the highway? The choice is obvious. One costs less than the other and doesn’t create a biological, environmental, and car crashal hazard. The other side of this coin is to enforce littering fines more strictly. God knows we have enough surveillance cameras to do it. But I also believe that a huge part of this problem is poverty itself.
You’re strapped for cash. Your freezer breaks down. You now have a several hundred dollar purchase ahead of you, which you have to charge to your credit card, and also have to get rid of the stupid freezer that broke on you. Paying for removal is expensive. Though so are the fines for dumping (but only if you get caught.)
There are so many problems tangled up in this question as well—planned obsolescence and our obsession with consumption are great topics for a future post. It’s a big dirty problem, and one that I think is worth thinking about, and hopefully, fixing.