Lost Messages - A Littering Rant

[Bamboozle]

I remember the commercial, do you?

There was a scene of a Native American, (we used to call them Indians way back then); sadly looking over pollution and a trash strewn landscape as a tear fell slowly down his cheek. The message:

Keep America Beautiful; DON?T LITTER!

As a naive kid back then I got the message loud and clear along with the other message on the side of my pack of Marlboro's. Stop throwing crap out of the car window and on the ground and while you?re at it; stop smoking, it causes cancer.

By the way, what ever happened to those "litter bags" that people used to hang from their cigarette lighters?

Yesterday while fishing at a local state park; I couldn?t help but sadly notice LOTS of discarded soda cans and candy wrappers left behind along the lake by slobs. While a Pennsylvania State Park may hardly be considered the ?great outdoors? by most; it IS the great outdoors for many. How come this life?s lesson; along with the smoking one has been lost on so many of today?s youth?

I know that possibly some of this discarded garbage was left behind by adults, but they may be my age which means they SAW "the commercial". If the offenders were adults but not old enough to remember the "crying Indian"; why didn?t THEIR parents tell THEM about the commercial?

While litter is wrong no matter where it happens; it is a particular egregious activity in an area that is SUPPOSED to be enjoyed for its natural beauty. I can only imagine what the trash dumpers backyards look like; but maybe they don?t $#!+ in their own playground, just mine.

While I don?t want to argue cause and effect or the possible sociological and economic reasons for littering and whether it is related to slovenliness, political affiliation or video games; I do want to plead to the parents of this country that the anti littering message of my youth seems to have been lost in amongst all of the other more trendy and ?worldly? messages out there. It just doesn?t seem to be as taboo to litter as it USED to be?

?I mean, somebody will eventually pick it up?right?

Oh yea, and while you are at it; teach your kids that smoking is bad for them too. The sight of $6 a pack cigarette smoke coming from the lungs of 20-somethings blows me away. I guess that warning label was a useless message too?

I never thought 30 years after I saw the Indian crying instead of a Marlboro commercial on TV; that I'd see a cigarette smoking kid throwing a candy wrapper on the ground.

Oh well, I guess I'm still naive.

?end of rant?

[J Castwell]

There is an element of our society, increasing actually, that holds themselves aside from the populace, the normal ones. We are fortunate that they are, for the time being anyway, in the minority or there would be laws supporting their behavior.

Laws, rules, ethics, even morales do not apply or restrain them. Their goals and motives are so important that nothing they can do is in any way 'wrong' nor can they be held responsible for any of their actions. To them, "the ends do indeed, justify the means." Therefore, there is no such thing as right and wrong, truth and lies or good and bad.

They're emotionally deficient, having failed to escape puberty and the denials of the period. They can not be held for blame as they have no comprehension of responsibility. There can be no changing of their attitudes, they are flawless and above reproach. Much of it relates to respect, their lack of it actually. Their respect for themselves and everything else are not open to question.

Their mother is still out there, picking up after them. At least they think she is. And they feel they darn well deserve it.

Toilet-training was never quite finished, bed-wetting was notable, but at least they no longer hold their breath, turn blue and fill their drawers when challenged. We still call them litter-bugs.

[FatBill]

All I can add to JC's post is "AMEN".

Bill

[SilverMallard]

Last week, a friend and I took a group of 6th graders from one of the local middle schools where he is teaching a fly fishing class in summer school to Roaring River SP to fish. My buddy had arranged for a reserved pool and 200 high-quality trout just for these 9 kids. When I say high quality I mean that the state of MO stocks 12" trout, but there wasn't one of these under 15" and some were well over 20". There was nowhere in that pool that a kid could cast to a spot with no fish. They caught a standard size ice chest full in 2 hours. Not bad at all for their first time fly fishing...some of them first time fishing, period.

Then we broke for lunch. The school had packed them all a nice brown bag lunch and my friend's daughter had brought Twinkies and all sorts of individual size bags of chips. We brought our own lunches and ate at a different picnic table from the kids. When it was time to go, my friend said, "It's time to go and you need to make sure and pick up all of this trash." But before he got to "...and you need to make sure...," the kids were running to the bus and screaming "it's not my trash...I didn't drop any trash." One kid stayed behind and helped my friend and I pick it all up. The trash cans were on the way to the bus. I swear there was not a single piece of paper or plastic from those lunches that was not on the ground around their table.

We cornered these heathens and told them they had just lost their ice cream stop on the way home. We explained why. I gave them my 2-minute speech "If everyone would pick up and dispose of one more piece of trash than they brought with them..." We got more protests early on, and that's why I gave the speech. It seemed to make sense to them. So we went fishing in a different part of the park.

We only had another half hour to fish before having to head back to the school. When we got back to the bus, we saw 2 of the boys who had wandered furthest away from us to fish carrying armloads of trash to the dumpster near the bus. They had spent their time picking up other people's trash in the adjacent campground instead of fishing. When everyone was on the bus, we pointed out what these two boys had done and told the group that these two had just earned them back their ice cream stop. But those two would get ice cream and the rest only a soda.

My buddy and I discussed this on the bus ride back. He's a retired school teacher who only retired last year. We concluded that these kids simply didn't know any better. You can SAY anything. You can put it on TV even. But without POSITIVE ROLE MODELS out there DEMONSTRATING it and making these kids feel consequences and rewards for bad and good behavior, they don't LEARN anything. You can't tell a kid to tie their shoes, demonstrate it once, and then ignore them. You have to actually TRAIN them to tie their shoes through repetition and reinforcement until it becomes second nature to them. Actually, this is true of EVERYTHING you want kids to learn. Educators have forgotten this. Parents have never learned it. And society no longer gives a rip. So don't blame the kiddos.

[ELKHUNTER]

I remember that commercial. If I remember right his name was
" Iron Eyes Cody" .

It became hard to teach kids right from wrong when they started throwing parents in jail for spanking their kids when they done wrong. When I was a kid if dad caught us throwing trash on the ground we got a good swat and then he gave us a bag and we had to pick up what we threw out as garbage plus we had to fill the bag with other trash laying around. We couldn't do anything else till that bag was filled.

Rocky

[TyroneFly]

I remember that commercial. If I remember right his name was
" Iron Eyes Cody" .

I remember that commercial as well. My parents would not tolerate us kids littering and would give us a lecture followed by a trash bag and sent out into the neighborhood to clean it up.

[Gnu Bee Flyer]

In British Columbia all beverage containers, cans , bottles, etc have a deposit on them and can be returned for cash. As a direct result of this you no longer see miles and miles of broken glass beside the highways. No longer do campsites have a multitude of cans and bottles littering about. The parks and playgrounds remain relatively clean. Even the cans that a few idiots do throw away are quickly scooped up by enterprising youngsters to add to their collections and turned in for cash.

Sadly the rest of the litter is still with us. As JC said, caused by the few non caring minority.

Very good post JC.

I too remember that comercial. I like to think that I also got the message! From my good friend rainbowchaser I learned to carry an empty onion bag with me to hold the trash I found.
Well, they don't make onion bags big enough to haul out all the trash you find along the rivers and in the puplic access areas here in TN! It's not just the adults, I see them "Training" the kids to litter too!! What a wonderful sight to see a whole family fishing the banks of the Duck or the Elk, of course when they leave bring in the front end loader to clean up the litter.
No bottle deposit here and it shows! As a new resident I am embarrassed and angered by the total disregard for "picking up behind you".
I guess they figure that when the TVA generates or discharges excess water it just gets flushed away!
This disregard for littering is not restricted to recreation area. I'm always picking trash out of my front yard!
One thing that States with bottle/can deposits should address is plastic water bottles. That is one of the items found most in Michigan.

[billknepp]

A Bump, An Amen and a hellz yeah!!!!

And as Jack points out...It sure does show in the difference of NY having the bottle deposit..and PA NOT having it.....Sure wish the powers that be here in PA would wake up and see the good it would do us ALL to have it....

[gonfishn]

Bamboozle J.C. and Silvermallard,give em both barrels.
I know way to many kids that feel entitled to do just as they please because they know that their parents will
excuse them no matter how foul their behavior.
My son and I just returned from an evening at a local river,while we were fishing some local yokels came waddling by with the obligatory big black rubber inner tube and landed in the hole right above us.
After 5 minutes of listening to them shouting really foul obscenities at each other I suggested they refrain from the profanity and they basically suggested I move along or get my arse kicked by their father.
{bring it on fat boy,if your old man can put down the beer can that long}
the sad part the oldest one was maybe 14 years old,the youngest 6 or 7.
At that age if I had talked to a grown up like that there would have been an arse kicking for sure.Mine!!
It would have been a week before I would have thought about sitting down.
The beat part though was my son when we left he looked at me and said dad you would kick my butt if I ever talked like that wouldn't you and I just looked at him,smiled and said YEP!! He laughed and we headed down the river.