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| Sonshine and our bag of litter |
This lasted about 40 minutes for me as I had to go online to get an address. OK.....so I shot onto Facebook as soon as his back was turned (ie he went to the toilet). I'm a grown up. I lie. He needs to deal with it.
Anyway, we decided to go for a walk and just take in the view, have a chat....bond, that sort of stuff that has been neglected when I do the Tarot Conference. So off we went to Loch Fad clutching our empty carrier bag. For not only are we Hestia and Sonshine, we are secretly environmental activists and, when we go a walk, we pick up rubbish in a plastic bag and then tip the whole lot into the last bin on the walk home.
OK - so we use a plastic bag, but it\s better than leaving the rubbish around. Just overlook that irony and see the GOOD :-)
We call ourselves the BAWGs - the Bag a Week Gang and we do exactly that: try to pick up a bag of litter from off the beaten track (ie where the council won't pick it up) on a weekly basis.
It's free to join, dear reader. All you do is resolve to pick up other people's rubbish once a week (or a month - then you'd be a BAMG!) when you are out - walking home from work, taking the dog a walk, playing with the kids.....anytime. There's always litter. Sadly. Sometimes I think that there are dead bodies.... but that's another story.
And, as Blur might say, you enjoy a sense of enormous well-being, when you pick up litter. A sort of environmental smugness. Which I like.
We did come across a LOT of peach scented bags filled with dog poop. WTF is going on with that?!
Bag it and take it home, people, but don't wang it up into the branches of a tree or fling into a hedge. If there's one thing worse than encountering a big dog poop on your travels, it must be encountering an ancient one sequestered into a well-knotted peach nappy bag.....
Erm, hope you weren't eating or anything while you were reading that.
I'm SURE the computer keyboard will clean up fine. Honestly.
Do you do any mad things when you're out and about?
Get the council to provide more dogpoo bins...I feel a campaign coming on LOL
ReplyDeleteOh dear - in terms of litter because our hours is on a slope coming off the main road I tend to pick it up from our front garden, mostly empty cigarette packets, bottles and cans and of course sanitary towel wrappers. Thankfully do far it has just been the wrappers - who do they end up dropped on the street?
ReplyDeleteI do a bit of this, tho not so organised. I pick up anything I think might hurt an animal - tin cans, glass, plastic bags, etc.
ReplyDeleteAs for the dog poo, sometimes I bag up and leave at side of path to collect on the way back on one walk where there are no bins - perhaps your neighbours did this but forgot to pick them up?
Your son looks like he'd be great company - must be nice to chatter away the hols with him. xxx
BAWG and BAMG, as you are aware, are both Scottish insults with a G on the end. It made me laugh. I pick up litter all the time. Littering INFURIATES me!
ReplyDeleteI think it is a very good idea, I walk locally every day and am disgusted by the stuff people discard without a thought for the planet. You have inspired me, next time I will take a bin bag and wear rubber gloves, all the bending down will be extra exercise anyway. Although I must say I prefer picking wild strawberries which is what I have done on my recent walks, then used them as garnish in lychee martinis!
ReplyDeleteGreat idea! I don't understand the dog poo bags in the trees either. Why bother to pick it up and bag it if you're not going to bin it? How is that helpful?
ReplyDeleteyou are a good woman Hestia.......I shout violent abuse at vehicles that speed past me while I'm on the zebra crossing....speaking for all pedestrians!!xx
ReplyDeleteThe dog poo thing really annoys me,the thing is wrapping it up in a bag and dumping it is worse than just leaving it to decompose.There's a chap around the corner from us who's out every day with his carrier bag,he's known as Orinoco :(
ReplyDeleteNS - it's a filthy habit to bag and just leave it behind, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteYaH - I can sympathise with that! Keep it up!
Beth - suspect that the flinging into trees might be done by small people who come along directly afterwards. But adults can be fuckwits too.
Mrs P - I'd deffo do one or the other while out walking. Wild strawberries sound delightful. Rubber gloves - good idea if you pick up real nasties. Sonshine and I do the two-finger pick up and then wash when we get in.
LM - we did call ourselves the BAW Bags, but I thought that this might offend people's sensibilities a bit!
Mrs E- well done. Quite often kids don't think about how it will affect creatures with pads. It can be an effective tool to get some of them to stop. But only some of them.
Siobhan - I feel your pain. Sanitary wrappers - yeah, what's the deal with THOSE?! They need to be made out of biodegradeable stuff too, don't they. Then again, a sanitary towel backing is plastic and will, therefore be around for about a million years.
Viv - what's a dog poo bin? We've barely got enough bins for household rubbish. I have had a bit of a success story with the bins, which I must post about at some stage.
Ali x
when we lived on vancouver island we'd do this one walk around the lake and, despite garbage bins throughout, people still did the bag'n toss thing into the bushes. for the life of me i can't understand why you'd take the trouble to neatly pack up your dog's waste in a plastic receptacle and then not follow through. sometimes they'd be tossed into the trees and hung there like some weird moss.
ReplyDeleteand how, exactly, do you know they were peach scented? huh?
I do have an explanation for the scented sacks hanging from the trees - if they are nappy sacks they are orange and smell of peach (I remember this from the nappy days), and I think dog walkers pop them into the trees out of the way so that they can pick them up on the way home, rather than carrying a bag of hot poo around with them! They just forget about them on the way back - sods. Yuk
ReplyDeleteI'm so impressed. Mr TNMA calls me Parky because I am always complaining about people's behaviour ie throwing litter, walking on the grass, vandalizing bus stops etc. Now I feel like I should do something about it!
ReplyDeleteNappies dumped on the pavement - not even bagged in peachy scentedness - why??? I even saw one from the top of a bus on top of a bus shelter once. wtf?? If they're not grown up enough to get rid of a nappy The Right Way, what sort of parent are they? ;)
ReplyDeleteI have to own up to picking up a tuna can that had got separated from its bin bag - couldn't stand the idea of some poor cat getting its face or paws shredded in it.
And yay to YAH for the militancy on the zebras - I tend to mouth rude things to people who've forgotten to put their indicators on and then try to run me over :)
Trashsparkle - the weirdness of people is sometimes better left alone. Who really wants to be inside the head of someone who can fling away a dirty nappy outdoors?
ReplyDeleteMrs TNMA - well done you! Parky! Looooove it! Get your wee supermarket bag into your pocket and quietly go about picking up the rubbish. You'll feel great ;-)
Mrs P - yep, dog walkers do that here - leave them discretely off to one side and then pick them up on the return leg of the walk. But sometimes SOMEONE, not necessarily the dog walker, does the ridiculous Up In Tree thing. I do hope that it's kids. I would hate to think that a sensible adult could think that flinging a bag of dog turds into a tree Makes Good Sense.
Polish Chick - They look like the nappy bags I used to use on Sonshine's foul doings. They sorta smelled of peach. Or something - just to take the poopy smell away. I haven't, I confess, actually picked up a peach poop bag and had a sniff. That would be weird.
Ali x
Dearest Ali, I'm still laughing at the last bit and I remember the dead body post well.
ReplyDeleteI hate people dropping litter. I told someone off for throwing their McDonald's wrappers out of their car window the other day. They looked at me stunned!
Your council need to put more bins in for dog owners them empty them on a regular basis, that's what they do here. There's a lot of dogs in Hackney. I hope you're enjoying the school holidays. Most of my friends are dreading it! xx
Christina - Well done! There's the famous apocryphal story of the biker on the motorway who ends up getting a hot fag end in his lap from the window of a car in front....then pulling level with the car and flinging the fag end back in through the window!
ReplyDeleteSchool holidays are awful. Sonshine got badly burned at the beach last week - am going to do a post on it because someone on FB v kindly sent me a lavender and camomile spray for his shoulders.
But first, I must post a picture of his birthday cake. Looks totally shit, but tastes excellent ;-)
Ali x