Litter & Liberty

Wednesday was a varied day: communion at Widelake House, a funeral where everything went wrong including a downpour at the cemetery which left us all drenched, and Church Club at the Infants School. Somewhat wearily I got to the church, ready for a walk to the supermarket to do my shopping as it was too wet to cycle, and found the porch full of trash.

There's a certain amount of research examining why people litter, most of it (quoted, for instance, here and here) concluding that it mainly relates to the availability of bins. This can't be the case with the youngsters who hang around the church, as, every adult who comments on the matter points out, they leave rubbish about despite being directly alongside a rubbish bin. There must be something else going on. 

Imagine being a teenager, especially a teenage boy, in a group sitting outside Swanvale Halt church, or in the porch, with a bottle of radioactive sweet pop or a horrible spicy sausage in a packet with a strikingly low actual meat content. You're certainly not going to put the remains into a bin if nobody around you is - but the likelihood is that you won't do it even if you're on your own, and I know this is exactly what happens. It's not just group dynamics. 

Think of it like this. Putting your rubbish into a bin, provided for the purpose by a public authority, would show that you accepted a constraint on your behaviour. It would mean recognising that you are not completely free to do whatever you like, that you have to take other considerations, other people and their feelings and ideas, into account; that you are not utterly autonomous, absolutely the master of your own destiny. Trash is freedom. It's more than that, it's a symbol of freedom.

Imagine, again, being in a place where leaving a crisp packet on a paving slab is what it means to be free. Great.