I have a few pet peeves in my life when it comes to things I see occurring in everyday life when I’m out and about. One of them deals specifically with something I’ve observed happening quite a bit lately. It’s when people don’t throw away their trash and expect someone else to do it.
It baffles me on why it’s so difficult for any individual to not discard their trash in a receptacle after they’re done with it. The most notorious place I see this happening is actually at the movie theater. When the lights come on at the end of a movie and people are scurrying out of their seats to leave the theater, I always see the many empty bags of popcorn, soda cups, and cardboard trays strewn across the seats everywhere. This constantly has made me wonder what people are really thinking when they leave their waste behind. My guess has always been that they’ve felt entitled to doing it. I have further fathomed that most probably make the assumption that they are paying for some staff person to clean up their mess because of their movie ticket purchase. While on some sense the money from a movie ticket might actually be paying for the employees of a theater to do their work, isn’t it really just a common courtesy to take our trash to the nearest garbage bin?
I’m not sure if it’s the lack of common courtesy or just plain ignorance that causes people to leave their trash behind, but I sure am grateful that I’m one of those who doesn’t practice this behavior. I have to thank my family for teaching me good values such as this one. They always taught me to put myself in the shoes of those people who end up having to clean up the trash left behind in those public places like a movie theater. That led me to thinking about how frustrated I would be if I was having to do that job and it’s become a great motivating force for me to consistently pick up my own trash no matter where I am now.
Sadly, it’s not just at the movie theaters I see this behavior happening either. It’s in the parking lots outside convenience stores where people are leaving their empty bottles, cigarette packs, and old scratch tickets on the ground. It’s in the fast food establishments where people are leaving their trays, dirty napkins, and wrappers behind on the tables. It’s in the public washrooms where people are leaving their used paper hand towels on the bathroom floors. And it’s even in the recovery meetings I attend where I see people leaving behind their empty drink bottles and coffee cups on the floors below their seats.
Why do so many people do this? I truly wish I had the answer. The only thing I know I can keep doing to deal with this problem is to continue taking the action to clean up after myself. So no matter where I am, I always make sure to take my trash to the nearest receptacle. Often, I even pick up other’s people trash left behind and discard it as well. It really isn’t that hard to take an extra second or two to discard our trash, and someone else’s for that matter, in a nearby bin. Thinking someone else is being paid to do that job is definitely lacking in common courtesy and isn’t it really just being plain ignorant in doing so?
The next time you find yourself about to leave your trash behind in any public place, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and try to picture yourself having to clean up your mess and everyone else’s too. Hopefully now you might reconsider doing this action ever again and instead start having the common courtesy to throw away your waste like those of us who do…
Peace, Love, Light, and Joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson