Saturday, April 04, 2009

Defeating the purpose


Defeating the purpose
Originally uploaded by Dave Traynor
It's Saturday morning. At some point during the night or early in the morning, someone walking by this garbage can at the entrance to the park stuffed it full of old clothing. As the day progressed, dutiful dog owners and people out for a walk passed by and deposited their bags full of dog crap and empty coffee cups on top of the clothing.

OK, it's good that you're picking up your garbage. But come on...who do you think is going to clean up this mess during the weekend? It's obvious that the can is full. Adding stuff to the top just means that it's going to look ugly for days. Thanks to cutbacks in the parks department, it might be a week or more before someone from the municipality shows up to empty the container. And by that time, there's going to be junk and dog poop all over the place.

The irony is that just about 20 metres away is an even bigger garbarge can, that's nearly empty. All people need to do is on to that bag for another few steps and they can dump it there.

There's an underlying problem here that is larger than just some dog poop piling up beside a garbage can. It's that people aren't willing to take enough responsibility for things in the community, like keeping it clean. That's not something that you have to turn over to a paid employee. Just pick up that garbage and make sure it gets put somewhere. Democracy isn't easy - it's hard work. We all need to do our part.

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