Habitual Consumers

The world is a mad, mad place. Not to say it hasn’t been for longer then I’ve been on earth in this skin because it has been. Just to let you know that when I say “Mad”, I mean both crazy and angry.

Me, I believe there are things worth fighting for. But what I won’t fight for are things that I can’t see when it comes to my physical existence in a physical world.

So, here’s what I have chosen to do while our world has gone into overdrive into madness.

I am going to stand firm and strong with my morals, standards and higher ideals. I’m going to stay on my path with a deep sense of love and strength.

I find I have a need to do something more while madness seems to reign in my nation and around the world, and when I say “something more”, I mean, something positive on a level that is realistic to my station in life. So, here just one thing I have chosen to do that will have a positive impact on my community.

For the past week I’ve noticed that along the highway coming into town has become inundated with trash and has become a disgusting eye soar. To me it seems like someone is purposely dumping trash, though I have no idea as of right now if that is the case. My husband and myself travel out of town twice a week, every week, and in the past two weeks, I’ve noticed that new trash is showing up with each trip to and fro. Whether by neglect or by malicious effort, new trash keeps being dumped at an alarming rate. I’ve decided to begin to walk the highway, large trash bags in tow, to begin to clean this highway up. Because I’m just one person, I’ve decided to omit picking trach up in front of houses that sit on the highway, because after all, surely the people who live in these houses would not want the entrance to their homes to look like a dump. They’ll have to do their own work. Lining the highway are long stretches of fenced in pastures, and it’s these areas I’ll concentrate my trash pick-up efforts. Granted, I’ve only spent a couple hours on one day, and my husband went with me so that I was not endangering myself with dogs or would be criminal behaviors of nefarious individuals. Between us we were able to get both sides of a half a mile trek, filing four large yard refuse bags. The area we picked to start cleaning, was perhaps the cleanest part of the highway, but we still managed to get four, 32 gallon bags, filled with trash. No telling how many bags will be needed for a truly trashed part of the highway. Yes, we buy the trash bags we use to pick up highway trash, as well as the gas it takes to do the job of riding to, from and during trash pick up, as well as using our own car to haul the trash. I plan to go out again in the next couple of days. What I’m doing with the trash is to bring the full bags back to our home and putting them out for trash pick-up to get once a week. If I had any other option as to where to take all that trash, I would choose it, but here in our rural area there is no other option that I know of.

With our trash service we are allowed six, 32 gallon bags of trash every week. My goodness that’s a lot of trash per household with only two adults! We usually put out at most two, 3/4 full large bags of trash per week, so that leaves us room for 4 more bags. We’re new to this area, as well, and haven’t yet set up a burn barrel. In time we will get one and burn all legally burnable trash so to lessen our footprint in the landfill arena. Also, we are gardeners, and most kitchen scraps, such as coffee grounds, egg shells and veggie matter, get put in a makeshift compost pile outside, not in the trash. We use to recycle cardboard, paper, magazines, metal and aluminum cans, plastics and glass, but these services aren’t offered in our area. Most of the trash from our household is recyclable material and it’s a darned shame this area doesn’t offer this service. I’m proud to say that, though we do buy new products with ridiculous kinds of toxic and unrecyclable packaging materials, neither my husband or self are habitual consumers. It matters to us to not be wasteful, so we often times buy used items, things with recyclable packaging materials, or, sometimes we don’t buy at all, and as well, part of getting away from being a habitual consumer is to choose to know the difference between a “Want” and a “Need”. Also, in that, learn to repair or refurbish, or simply – make from scratch if possible. Five years ago we lost our home and our truck and we’ve had to put our frugal and smart lifestyle on hold, but now that we’re in a stable place we can begin anew. To be honest, I miss recycling and finding free, cheap and easy ways to accomplish things.

So, as to all the disgusting trash being deposited for whatever the reason, maybe there’s much that one small person can do about it, aside just picking the trash up. Maybe, just maybe, a movement can be started to get people to care. I would like to see more people walk the highways and byways of this area, picking up trash, to keep it beautiful, and all those would-be thoughtless litterers, maybe if they see people caring enough to clean their litter and trash, they won’t feel right about just tossing the trash out of their vehicle as they drive down the road. As to those people who are being malicious and nefarious and dumping actual bags of trash from their vehicles, it is my hope that at some point they are found out and fined. What’s happening on the highway coming into this town has a feel of a purposeful dumping of bags of trash, and being done in the last few weeks. My instinct tells me that it’s one person doing it as a disrespect to another. But, I don’t know. We’ve lived here for 8 months and sure, there has always been some litter, but not like it has become over the last couple weeks. Something has happened to speed up the trashing of this highway.

Also, in the least, I can check with the water company that charges us so much a month for trash pick-up to see if they might put some large trash bins in accessible areas, so we can put the extra trash there. Also, recycle bins put in a central area in town. Maybe our town leadership might be able to help somehow. Just out of the city limits is a historical marker, and it is there that some of the most trash is along the hiway – and since it is close to the city, maybe they’ll see the wisdom of putting a trash can there.

As a final note, just a few days ago my husband and I went for a drive to pick up a bottle of Irish Whiskey, so to make Irish Cream for his morning coffee, and while parked at the gas station/liquor store, a car pulled in behind us, parked next to us, a man got out and walked to the side of the building and dropped an empty pop bottle on the ground, before he went into the store. 30 foot away sat an empty trash can in the same parking lot. My one thought was, what an idiot. My second thought was, why wasn’t the trash can in front of the building. Basically, I was dismayed that people seem to care so little. I have to discipline myself not to be ugly about what I see is starting to really be an issue. In todays world, there are enough ugly people doing very ugly things, I want to do beautiful things, for all the right reasons. I want to add beauty, empower people, have a creative outlet that is beneficial for all. Right now, the opportunity to do something good is laid at my feet. In the least, the highway to and fro, will get some TLC, at most, maybe this community can get involved and begin to do something that unites us.

I just thought of how to protect myself from vicious dogs…lol. Take some sort of food, like lunch meat or who knows, and should any decide to approach me, all I have to do is toss a goodly portion of some yummy tidbit it’s way. If that doesn’t work, maybe my husband’s 44 will dissuade the animal. If that isn’t enough, I have a stout, sharp blade that could cause some real pain. I should have a reflective vest so cars know to watch out for me. Maybe I can find some inexpensive reflective tape at the hardware store and sacrifice an extra jacket I have on hand.