New Coastie – Talking rubbish

Ah, the great outdoors – fresh air, sunshine, and a lovely variety of soft drink cans, energy drink bottles, sandwich wrappers, and rogue Macca’s Big Mac boxes. Welcome to the Great Outdoors Buffet, where the menu is paper, plastic, aluminium, and dog poop. I take my 15-month-old daughter to the Stanmore Bay Beach playground and sports fields every day after daycare. At the daycare, she learns about colours, animals, and numbers, but at the playground, she learns about corporate packaging conventions and human eating habits. Yesterday, she came running to me, handing me freshly chewed gum, thinking that it was putty.

Some of us have decided that rubbish bins are decorative rather than the final resting places for that extra-large latte cup. Yes, those cups are recyclable, but that doesn’t mean another person picks up the cup from the ground, uses it for their morning coffee, and resupplies to the environment for the next person to pick up. 

You are reading this and thinking, how dare you lecture us on littering? Hey, I am not talking about you; you are one of the good people, pedantically finding rubbish bins, taking your trash home, and picking up your dog poop. I am talking about those filthy, neglectful others.

There are three types of litterers. First, there’s the “Oops” Litterer—the one who “accidentally” drops their coffee cup on the pavement and then walks away at the speed of light. Then we have the “We pay our taxes” Genius, who believes the council has an army of personal butlers who clean up after ourselves. Then, of course, there’s the “But It’s Biodegradable!” Intellectual, who thinks that an apple core on the playground will magically ferment in the sunlight, providing food for the worms or my daughter; either way, it goes back to nature.

You are thinking, surely, it’s not everyone who litters. It’s just a small percentage of inconsiderate people. Well, even if only one per cent of a superb team of five million litter daily, it’s 50,000 pieces of rubbish gracing us on our pavements, cobbled walkways, and beaches. I think that is a lot. You might think that a single chips bag or energy drink can is no big deal, but litter is an adventurous being. A napkin tossed out of a car window flutters into storm drains, clogs waterways, and eventually finds its way to the ocean. Your single gum wrapper might be kilometres away from you tomorrow, but it’s well on its way to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Pacific, which is already twice the size of Texas.

So how to break a littering habit. It’s easier than you think: Use a rubbish bin – They exist. If you can walk some way to find an internet signal on your phone, you can walk to find a rubbish bin • Take your rubbish home – we hear of the council reducing the number of rubbish bins, but that doesn’t mean we take revenge and throw it on the ground. Take it with you. Put it in the red, yellow, or green bin • No excuses – If you have the energy to open a snack, you have the energy to dispose of its wrapper properly • Be judgemental – If you see someone littering, throw a judgmental glare their way. Peer pressure can be a force for good.