Picking Up Litter

 

“Dad, can you get me a trash bag?”  Elise asked me.

“Sure,” I replied.  “What do you want to do with it?”

“I’m going to go along the road to pick up trash!”  She announced proudly.  “You can come along and hold the bag for me.”

With this glorious invitation, I accompanied my five-year-old daughter out to Wyatt Miles Road to pick up a variety of litter.  The treasures we discovered included beer cans, plastic bottles, and plastic bags.

“Isn’t this exciting?”  Elise asked me.  “I just LOVE picking up trash.  It will make everything so clean along the road.  But who would throw litter out like this?”

“Do you think maybe there are Indians in our woods?  Maybe they are the ones who throw these things out,” I said.

She thought for a moment, then shook her head.  “No, Dad,” she said.  “Indians would not do something like that.”  The question wasn’t whether there were Indians in our woods, but rather whether they would choose to litter and of course, she was right.  Native Americans would never dump trash along the roadside.

“Maybe it’s animals,” I said.  “I hear that racoons are pretty bad at spreading trash around.”

Elise nodded her head sagely.  “Yes, racoons are a mess!”  She spied a McDonald’s cup on the edge of the woods.  “I’m going to get that cup,” she said.  As she returned to put it in the bag, she said, “This is a cup for caffeine coffee.  I couldn’t drink it because I don’t drink caffeine!”

I am not sure why people litter.  Maybe it is as simple as them believing that once an item is out of their hand, it becomes somebody else’s problem.  Since it is only one item, it isn’t that big a deal, is it?

“Whose woods are these? I think I know.

His house is in the village though

He will not see me stopping here

To drop my beer can in the snow.”

I am thankful for a daughter who wants to see the world clean and fresh and new and is not discouraged by the fact that the trash we picked up today will soon reaccumulate. 

The Apostle Paul wrote, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”  (Galatians 6:9)

It is hard to carry on without growing weary, particularly as the people around us continue to heap problems for us to deal with.  It is still best if we focus on the little good that we can, each day attempting to make our world – and the worlds of those around us – a better place to live in.

It doesn’t really matter if it is racoons or elves (but it’s not elves) who are leaving a mess for others to find, the rest of us can still leave the world a little cleaner than we found it. 

One McDonald’s Styrofoam cup at a time.