When Nature is a Litterbug

It’s fall in South Lake Union, and the many deciduous trees in our neighborhood are doing the thing that deciduous trees do in the fall – littering! 

Don’t get me wrong – I love the look of sidewalks and streets covered in the kraft-paper look of fall leaves.  But eventually they get pulverized, they rot, and they become a wet soggy mess.  Seattle has been blessed (or cursed – I haven’t decided) with a dry fall, so the leaves are a delight.  However, I’ve noticed that City workers, local businesses, and residents have been expending great amounts of energy to remove the drifts of leaves collecting in their driveways and along planted areas.  

It never occurred to me to pick up “One Leaf A Day” – I draw the line there, folks – nature was here first, whether we planted the trees or not.  And I do not object to a leaf the way I object to the similar look of a discarded paper bag.  I don’t feel that tug of responsibility that draws me to remove human detritus from my surroundings.  Walking down the street shuffling my feet through the piles of leaves on the sidewalk is one of the joys of fall.

That’s right: I am an apologist for nature.  So sue me.

Cities are not so forgiving.  Every day on my walk to work I see workers with large bags and leaf blowers.  They have been at it for weeks, and still I see no dent in the leafy covering.  It made me wonder – how much do municipalities pay for leaf removal during the fall, and where does that money come from?

It turns out that the answer varies from place to place.  A web search brought up a random sampling of information.  For example, the city of Portland, faced with a budget shortfall in 2010, instituted a $30 fee for leaf removal to cover about $800,000 in missing revenue. The move angered some residents, who had always enjoyed free leaf removal before.

In other parts of the country, leaf removal is included in city services and is paid for presumably by property tax revenue, but for homeowners who have to foot the bill themselves, costs average around $400 nationally, though they can be much higher in certain areas – according to HomeAdvisor,  Seattleites can expect to pay an average of $665 for leaf removal, with costs going as high as $1300 a season.

As for me, good old elbow grease with a rake suffices for my yard. My daughter and I love to jump in the leaves.  And the collected material makes great compost.

Enjoy the fall, folks, and appreciate the leaves while you can.

One re-usable piece a day

Before I picked up garbage, I scavenged.  I learned it from my parents, who taught me that the dumpster behind Ralphs at Wilshire and Bundy contained perfectly usable food – lettuce that might have a few bad leaves, bread that was not quite fresh but not yet stale or moldy.  By the time I was 12 I was wandering the alleys of Brentwood and finding treasures in trash cans.  To this day I cut wood with an axe whose head I found discarded in an alley.

Ok, in hindsight, finding a discarded axe in an alley in Los Angeles might have been less a reason to exult and more a reason to call the police, but I was young and it was a cool find.

While I’ve left my dumpster-diving days behind me, I am not blind to good finds. A few weeks ago I spied a perfectly good neoprene knee brace at the park ‘n ride I frequent.  I left it or a day to make sure nobody was coming back for it.  A bird had pooped on it, but after a trip through the washer it was good as new.  I have a trick knee and I periodically have need for a brace.

Today was a two-find day.  On my walk to work, after collecting a bagful of random detritus, I found a brand new bandanna.  It was lying in the street.  I peered at it carefully to make sure it didn’t contain anything objectionable, but it seemed to only carry stains from having been run over a few times.

Then, at the park ‘n ride on my way home, a re-usable plastic Starbucks coffee cup was discarded in the bushes.  My keen sense of observation tells me that somebody was drinking liquor out of it.  Both have received a very thorough series of washings in very hot soapy water, and are ready to go into rotation.

I draw the line at underwear, socks, shoes…  you might be surprised how often those crop up.  I have to admit I often have a difficult time bringing myself to pick those up to discard them.  Hand washing – it’s not just for dinnertime.

Who can resist free stuff?  Pick up a piece a day and it will happen!

The intangible benefits of garbage

I don’t believe in altruism.  Never have.  Anybody who does something good does so for one reason and one reason only – they are getting something out of the deal.I apply that to myself as well.  If I feel like picking up other peoples’ garbage is a good idea, then I must be getting some benefit out of it, tangible or intangible.The other day as I was walking to work, several pieces of effluvia in my hand, thinking about why I do this.  At the heart of it, I believe in leaving things better than I found them, as a general principle.  There is definitely a trace of OCD in there, helping to drive that forward.But when I really think about it, it occurs to me that there are several aspects of my commitment to One Piece a Day that resonate with me. 

Mindfulness

When I create an intention to act, it creates a focus in my life, a noticing.  I notice the quality and cleanliness of my surroundings.  Instead of ignoring, I notice and I act.  I tune in to the state of the world around me, and I take action.  I see the stains on the sidewalk, the homeless in the streets.  I am a witness to the world, and I believe that witnessing is good in and of itself. 

During the day, I am aware of my commitment and it is never far from my thoughts.  I am mindful of whether I have met my commitment for the day.  It becomes part of the meditation of my day, something separate from my work and home, something that is mine and that helps to color my existence.

Humility

Picking up garbage grounds me.  In a literal way, it brings me close to the ground.  In a figurative way it forces my ego to abase itself, to orient itself to the earth, to put itself at the service of higher parts of myself.  In a cultural way, it reminds me that I’m a child of the earth, that I’m not too good to touch the ground, that other people are my equal.  It breaks through social stigma, and I’m hopeful that others will notice and be inspired to take up the practice themselves.

Service

As a member of society, I owe service to my city, state, and country, and to my fellow humans.  By picking up garbage, I improve my corner of the world. I reduce the need for paid city employees to pick up trash.  I improve the quality of life for others around me, as well as for myself – I take more pleasure in an environment that is clean and tidy, where grass appears green and natural and sidewalks are not littered with butts and food wrappers.  I put myself at the service of others without expecting anything in return.

Health

My body is a self-healing machine.  My immune system responds to foreign germs by building specific resistance.  Picking up garbage puts me in touch with the germs in my environment, allowing my body to build a better resistance.  My practice helps remind me to wash my hands and be mindful of the cleanliness of my hands when I eat.

One piece a day is good for me, for my environment, and for society. Will you join me?

The Biodegradable fallacy

When my girlfriend Bree and I were living together in 1987, we had a bright idea:  why mess around with the labor of composting?  We had a huge garden, and everything that went into the compost was biodegradable.  Why not compost the way nature does?  So we did what seemed to make sense:  we started tossing our food waste directly into the yard, beneath our fruit trees, beneath shrubs, in amongst the herbs. Soon our garden was littered with orange and banana peels, lettuce ends, apple cores, and other detritus from our kitchen.

We learned a few things over the year that we ran this experiment.  We learned that without a moist anaerobic environment, vegetable matter dries out and degrades very slowly.  We learned that even natural matter scattered around the garden looks like trash – we noticed it, and the neighbors complained.  Above all, we learned that “biodegradable” does not mean it’s ok to throw it in random parts of the yard, and that yes, there is a reason to go through the little bit of effort  necessary to accelerate decomposition through proper composting.

Which brings me to the topic of today.  Ever since the advent of the compostable coffee cup, there seems to be an uptick in the amount of coffee cups dumped on the side of the road.  I second guessed this observation for months, but when the cups started to pile up in certain areas, it became evident that one or more somebodies had fallen prey to the same fallacy that I had decades before: that “biodegradable” or “compostable” means it’s ok to just drop the cup in the dirt on the side of the road, and that nature would take care of disposal. 

I ran into the same fallacy this week in South Lake Union when I came across a mall pile of discarded containers in the gravel near Whole Foods.  I picked them up and, sure enough, they all had the word “compostable” printed on them. 

Folks, these are not leaves decomposing on the forest floor.  They are man-made artifacts that are designed to break down when shredded and mixed with a bacterial slurry in a composting facility.  When they disappear from where you left them, it does not mean that nature has taken its course.  It means that somebody with more common sense than you has picked them up and disposed of them properly, one piece at a time.

No ifs ands or butts - probing smoker psychology

I’ve been scratching my head for a couple of years now over the profusion of cigarette butts that collect on the ground.

Litter, I understand.  Most of the time, litter does not result from people wantonly throwing trash on the ground.  Trash cans overfill, and trash falls off the top.  Crows scavenge food wrappers from the bin and don’t think to replace them when they’ve finished eating the tasty morsels.  Cups are forgotten on the tops of cars, or spill unseen from the side of the seat when the door is opened.  These are not intentional acts of littering.

Cigarette butts, on the other hand, are put there by smokers.  The cigarette is smoked to the nub, and the burning thing is dropped on the ground and not picked up again.

Why?  Why would presumably normal intelligent people, most of whom would probably never stoop to throwing litter on the ground, believe it is acceptable to throw these artifacts to the pavement and leave them there?  And of all things, why something that when combined with rainwater results in toxic chemicals being carried into waterways with adverse impact to marine life?

I have contemplated approaching smokers to ask them this question.  I have not done so; not because I am afraid to approach people in public, but because I cannot imagine a way of phrasing the question without coming across as antagonistic and preachy.  Maybe I am antagonistic and preachy.  I just don’t want to ruin somebody’s day or have them ruin mine, so I keep quiet and wonder.

In the absence of actual evidence, I have speculated and come up with hypotheses.  Some of these are supported by research – this seems to be a common question in online forums.

1. A cigarette is a burning object and is not safe to place in a receptacle which may contain flammable materials.  If there is no ashcan specifically made to contain burning materials, then putting the butt on the ground is the safe thing to do.  A corollary of this line of thinking is that people who maintain public facilities have the obligation to provide proper disposal for flammable materials in all public spaces, and if these are not provided then a smoker cannot be held responsible for littering.   (Question: if you put out the offending item by stepping on it, isn’t it ready for disposal?  Or does the fact that it has been on the ground now make it dirty and offensive to touch? )
2.    Cigarettes are thrown from cars because butts left in the ashtray create a worse smell in the car than the residue left by the smoke.
3.  Cigarettes are small and seem like an innocuous thing to leave behind.
4.  Piles of butts gather in certain areas – outside businesses or at park and ride lots – and the presence of butts on the ground creates the perception that it’s ok – after all, what’s one more butt where there are already so many?

While all of these seem plausible, I’d like to advance another theory.  Smoking in our society has become less and less acceptable over the years, beginning with the surgeon general’s report on smoking and health in 1964, and smokers, already guilty over their addictions, are more and more marginalized – pushed out of public buildings and their own workspaces, made to feel inferior, and maybe even invisible.  Could this be a smoker’s small and subconscious way of showing up, of saying “I’m here?”  Could leaving a butt in a pile of butts left by other smokers be a way of expressing solidarity against a world where smoking is a badge of dishonor?

In any case, I try to pick up one or more butts every day in addition to other trash.  Join me, will you?

Ready-bagged trash day

I bus to work as often as possible, parking at a local park and ride.  Which park and ride I choose depends on where I plan to end up after work and (more usually) how late in the morning it is – the most direct commuter buses don’t tend to run past 8 AM weekdays.

Park and ride lots are hotspots for street trash – and I’m not talking about the disenfranchised youth of our fair city.  I’m talking about discarded advertising postcards from peoples’ windows, coffee cups that fell or were tossed from commuters’ cars, windblown newspapers, too many cigarette butts to count (more on that in a future post!), and a surprising number of lost or discarded articles of clothing.

Imagine my surprise when I stopped to pick up what looked like a big wad of trash, only to discover that it was already conveniently bagged.  It looks like somebody took the time to bag up the trash from their car, put that bag inside another bag… and then somehow the whole mess wound up in the planted island between parking rows, instead of the rubbish bin where it belonged.  All I can say is, somebody meant well.

Keep Portland Cleared

Last weekend, my wife and I road-tripped South to one of our favorite weekend destinations.  Portland is a great place to visit, and a fantastic place to eat.   We had beer and sandwiches at The Side Door, a wonderful foodie experience streetside at Clyde Common (one of my absolute favorite Portland restaurants – I took my best friend and 6 of his best friends there when he got married this spring), brunched at Jamison, and assuaged our sweet tooths at Cupcake Jones and Cool Moon.  It was, as always, a wonderful culinary treat.

As we wrapped up a post-brunch visit with some good friends from San Francisco and prepared to get in the car for the ride home, it suddenly occurred to me that I’d missed my One Piece on Saturday and was dangerously close to missing Sunday as well.  I perked up and looked around Jamison Square.  I saw people – lots of people – milling about, having fun, strolling the street.  And… no garbage.  I thought back over the last 24 hours.  We were out on the street, out in public, in a very lively urban city, for two days, and not once did an errant soda bottle or diaphanous garbage bag waft into my view.  Either Portland is one of the cleanest cities around, or I’m losing my touch.

I strolled around the park, and after hunting a bit, managed to find a discarded hamburger wrapper and nearby, the discarded mylar covering from an energy bar.  And into a nearby trash bin it went.

Rock on, PDXicans – keep it weird, and keep on keeping it clean!