Littering: How Is This Still A Thing?

The recent Dogwood Festival parade has me asking: how is littering still a thing?

Look at old movies. television shows, or movies and shows based on older times (Mad Men). People thought nothing of leaving trash everywhere. What surprises me is that in 2015, it is still happening.

When I lived in Missouri, the common litterbug was the pick-up truck driver. Sure, they throw their trash in the bed of the truck. But as they drive around their trash blows out of the bed onto the street.

I still see smokers today throwing their butts (and even worse, crumpled empty cigarette packs) out of car windows.

I bring up the Dogwood Festival parade because not only was I a participant, but I was part of the clean-up committee. A group of Quincy Notre Dame students and I walked down a portion of Maine Street picking up the remnants of this years parade.

I must give credit to some families. At the end of the parade, the parents and their kids were seen policing their area, picking up unwanted candy and spent wrappers.

There were some areas where it seemed nothing was picked up. Plenty of unclaimed candy was left on the street and in the grass. But, to my surprise, there were plenty of empty wrappers. That's right - people eating some of the candy and then throwing their wrappers on the ground for someone else to clean up.

Are we telling our kids that it is OK to litter? Not exactly in those words. But when we don't teach them to clean up their area, we are inadvertently giving them the OK to litter.

It is a shame, too. The majority of the people that are on Maine Street to watch a parade do not live in the home or work in the business that they are parked in front of. You would think that parents would teach their children that they should leave their area "better than they found it". The problem is that it is the parents, sometimes, that leave more of a mess than the children. Shame on you.