In my capacity as a bloody-do-gooder I pick up other people's litter. Do you?
On a fell in the Lake District you can't help it. It's obviously too miserable, ugly and depressing to see a Coke can perched on a tuft of heather. So you stuff it in your bag. Of course you do. It drives you mental to think that anyone could be so pigging stupid as to leave it there that you take it away, trying to make it all better.
But I've got the habit and can't now walk past the same Coke can in suburbia.
I've scooped up armfulls of Happy Meal packaging from the floor of the 65 bus. I've picked up an abandoned punnet of chips from outside the kebab shop and walked it the 6 metres that was needed to get it to a bin. I've collected up TK Max bags, together with the dumped clothes hangers and packaging from the floor of a train. I've picked-up, emptied and binned / recycled dozens of Stella, Red Bull, Iron-Bru and coke cans.
Of course people do stare. So much the better.
I've even picked up the litter as soon as I've seen it dropped and offered to put it in the bin for the litterer. (how annoying am i?) Would you believe he said "No, give us it back mate, I'll do it myself".
I did a quick google search for an image to go with this post but spotted this:
http://www.litteraction.org.uk/
The campaign I was going to suggest sort of already exists.
Though I don't think it has to be organised. Anyone else up for picking up other people's litter? If everybody who thinks litter's minging simply picked it up and binned it now and then, it'd go away wouldn't it? Maybe even if litter-droppers saw normal people picking up crap from the street, they'd think it could be worth making the streets an attractive place to be.
Anyone?
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