The Face of Litter I created and exhibited in various galleries -- a found object sculpture of sorts -- was built using a 100 year old handled, Protestant collection basket as its armature. My face's topography consisted of shards of glass, cigarette butts, scraps of candy bar labels, soft drink lids and other discarded items too numerous to catalogue in this commentary. I'm sure you could have just as easily filled out that face with your own often-seen litter, whose tasteless, senseless, ever-growing accumulation so ignomineously blankets Mother Earth from pole to pole and gutter to shrine, everywhere we travel.
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| Soft Drink Lid and Cigarette Butt, dumped in the Parking Lot of Panera Breads in Dover, New Hampshire |
And yet each morning, as I exit my Subaru and cut across the parking lot to sit and have my tea and toast over the New York Times, I'm inevitably annoyed, then angry, then recurringly depressed to see evidence everywhere that not everyone who visits this establishment shares my deep appreciation for the beauty and utility of the Panera Bread facility.
How does one begin to explain the proliferation of litter in American culture? What are these litterers thinking when they so blithely toss their trash out the window of their car, then saunter into their store of choice with nary a twinge of guilt or social responsibility to becloud their sunny day?
As a country, we've become so innured to the ubiquitous presence of litter that even if we're offended at the sight of it, we ignore it. Perhaps that's because we know that the moment we pick up a fast-food wrapper or cigarette butt from the grounds of a school or church or convenience store, it will quickly and inevitably be replaced by something as bad or even worse than what offended us in the beginning.
Like the vast majority of business establishments we frequent as a necessary part of our days, Panera Bread appears not to have a plan to gather up the litter in their lot and discard it in a more responsible way. Like most of us, they're hardened to the reality of its presence on their property, so they appear to have given up. Perhaps they've joined the masses and have decided that what they've just stumbled over or gotten on their shoes was only an apparition -- and someone else's problem.
My answer to this scourge of contempt for the beauty and serenity of our surroundings has been more empirical than philosophical. Each time I visit Panera Bread, I stoop down and pick up one or two pieces of litter, then drop them into a trash container, either outside or within the facility.
Sure, it doesn't begin to match the dedication of that lonely traveler in Dover who for the past two decades has tramped around downtown Dover, picking up vast quantities of litter, putting them in his trash bag, and taking them away, leaving hard-won beauty and a certain environmental integrity in their place. This man is worth 50 do-nothing politicians and municipal employees who don't seem to give a damn about the relentless disrespect for and diminution of the beauty of their community.
This all reminds me of one of the finest public service television advertisements ever created: the poignant, provocative image of a proud American Indian, standing on the crest of a hill, shedding a beautiful but heart-breaking tear at the sight of the trash he sees scattered around the land that he and his people see as sacred -- land desecrated countless times each day by people who are careless, thoughtless and indifferent to the ideal of envrionmental responsibility.
If the litter you see around you each day was left by a teen-ager, one has to wonder: did that teen-ager's parents ever sit down and talk with him or her about the shamelessness of littering? Have you had that same meaningful talk with your children?
And if that same dispicable litter was left by you -- or some other allegedly responsible adult, perhaps even your neighbor -- then for God's sake, I implore you to sit down, turn off your television and think about the contemptible arrogance of what you'd just done! "Not my problem; someone else will clean it up!" is an inexcusable answer to the one question I have for you this morning: Why on this earth -- our one and only home -- do people litter? And why do they feel no guilt when they insult the members of their community in such a thoughtless, indefensible way?
Ross Bachelder
Berwick, Maine
St. Patrick's Day, 2012
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