Personally, I don’t love carrying my garbage around with me, but I recognize that it wouldn’t exist without my intervention. Nobody ran up and asked me to hold an empty cup. I thoughtlessly bought something. Thoughtlessly consumed it, and now I have to hold onto the detritus for a little while? Great. It’s easy. Easy to embrace that modicum of responsibility for your own waste. This is my protest song, the world’s lamest: I will attend to my garbage without complaint.
I agree, but I have to say I’m not familiar with the attitude that prompted him to write this. It sounds completely bananacrackers to me to go into a store and ask to throw something away that has nothing to do with that store. And when it comes to hiking, I feel like everyone knows that everything that comes in with you should leave with you. (But apparently not?)
The interesting part to me is his implication that the world might feel better without public garbage cans. I think if people really would take care of their trash, that’s absolutely true… but there’s enough litter already WITH public garbage cans that I struggle to imagine it going well.
Yeah, I don’t understand why people think getting rid of public garbage cans would help at all.
I spent some time homeless, and always thought I was being polite by throwing my stuff away in other people’s garbage instead of losing it, but I guess this author would hate me for it.