Getting serious about all that unsightly litter

Muscowpeting man walks the talk, so imagine if we all followed his lead

Whatever name it goes by — litter, trash or rubbish — one of the annual rites of spring is the snow melt giving up its garbage everywhere.

On my radio show this week, we met Kamao Cappo, the Saskatchewan guy from Muscowpeting First Nation whose Facebook challenge got people talking.

Kamao can’t stand litter. He carries plastic bags in his truck, pulls over and picks up trash from highway ditches because he needs to.

Admitting that he used to do it at night so he wouldn’t be thought of as “that guy,” he finally went public, got his kids involved and issued a challenge to indigenous people to “walk our talk” on preserving Mother Earth.

What a breath of fresh air — a guy who believes that one person’s efforts, multiplied by hundreds, can bring change.

He even stopped recently at a city Tim Hortons and picked up around the parking lot because the blowing garbage bothered him.

Every year, great volunteer organizations do litter cleanups and governments spend millions of dollars, although many of us grumble that it never seems to be enough or in the right places.

But imagine the incredible power of each of us becoming highly motivated in our personal lives.

The first job is simple: Don’t litter. Not even a bit. And don’t tolerate it from anyone else, from friends and family to strangers or faceless businesses.

Then think of the principle that everywhere we go we should leave things cleaner than we found them.

This doesn’t mean major cleanups (although channelling Kamao Cappo wouldn’t hurt) but what about just picking up a gum wrapper blowing on the street?

It’s about showing pride of place. People who respect and value where they live don’t despoil it. If we love our communities, why would we allow anyone to throw garbage on them?

It is common where societies are in decline to see trash and neglect as symptoms of despair, hardship and hopelessness squeezing out optimism and pride.

Alternatively, one of our listeners who had lived in Singapore commented on the culture of pride where signs and trash receptacles are everywhere and it is socially unthinkable to litter, which she found was a stark and disappointing contrast to Saskatchewan.

Attitudes toward litter haven’t been helped by modern urban and business planning, which in most places ranges from generally poor to awful.

Next time you are downtown or in a shopping centre or at an event, count how many steps you will take to find a garbage container.

Walt Disney famously discovered, when setting up his first amusement park, Disneyland, by surreptitiously following families that 30 paces was the distance people would walk before looking for somewhere to set down their trash if a receptacle did not appear. Today, we have far too few garbage bins, along with an unwillingness to keep them regularly emptied.

And remember that Disney’s bold discovery was made in the 1950s, years before bottled water, disposable coffee cups, fast food and wrappers on everything.

There’s an interesting symmetry between our own personal attitudes, choices and behaviour and moving them into societal standards. When we establish and enforce norms, then we can demand more from policy.

When litter in our personal and public spaces is unacceptable, imagine the social disapproval and penalties that will land on someone who deliberately dumps trash bags in a ditch or drives a truck to a landfill strewing garbage behind them because they were too dense or lazy to put on a tarp.

Every spring we talk a good game about litter. But talking is easy. Are we prepared to actually do things differently?