What are we doing? The Pointlessness of Littering

Has anyone else noticed that by the time 1:00 rolls around, Silver Oak looks almost... apocalyptic? Yeah. Me too. But the question is, why do we act as though there's nothing we can do about it? Litter is not an inevitable issue - it is not something that we should have an it is what it is type of attitude toward.

I don't know about you guys, but I don't enjoy living in squalor. When you look around, you will see that there are so many trash cans on our campus. Think about it: you leave your trash on a table, you get up and go to class... passing at least two trash cans in the process. In doing this, you are literally trying to litter. You're trying to!

So let me make one thing clear. I'm not here to tell you you are lazy. I am not here to call you out on your lack of environmental diligence. And I'm definitely not here to accuse you of having bad eating habits. I am simply trying to explain to you that the aforementioned phenomenon (eat-drop-pass trash cans-repeat) which we practice daily makes no sense whatsoever.

Those are the slips with the Kestrel's url on them.. Thanks a lot, guys.

In case I have not stressed my point enough, here is a list of what we actually achieve by littering:

1. We give ourselves extra work (putting garbage down rather than leaving it in the trash on the way to class)

2. We give the green team unnecessary work - they could be spending their community service hours actually improving the school.

3. We are burdening the squirrels, whom I know are widely adored.

So next time you're throwing your garbage on the ground, don't ask yourself how cool you are because of it. Instead, ask yourself, "why?"

All of the following images are from the same day - in fact, they're from the same span of 10 minutes: