| Let’s talk dirty.
Everyone I have interviewed for my column or for a feature article has been asked this question: Why do you live here? The most common reply is, "It’s not Toronto. " So let’s make an effort to give us the most obvious advantage over Toronto – cleanliness. Face it, the amount of trash you see by the side of the road seems to increase in direct proportion to the distance you travel into the city. Fast food containers, empty latté cups, cigarette butts, candy bar wrappers: how did our urban landscape become such a tapestry of trash? Attitude. A pervasive carelessness about how we treat our own living space. Don’t just blame the teenagers, don’t blame the kids. Blame us. We made this mess and we are the ones who will have to clean it up. ‘Eventually, we might become known as Thornhill – The Clean City.’ We’re living in an upscale dump simply because we allowed it to happen. The good news is we can fix it, without spending a dime. We just need a little attitude adjustment in disposing of what I like to call our transportable trash. The coffee cups, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts, and so on, that are the effluvia of our in-a-hurry lifestyle. Let’s all start by making two simple changes. After your next trip to the supermarket, leave a couple of plastic bags in the car and use them to hold the coffee cups, burger wrappers, and other pieces of automotive flotsam and jetsam that will no longer be thrown out the window. When the bags are full, take them inside and add them to your regular household garbage bins. Instead of flicking that butt into the street while you’re waiting for a bus, make extra effort to use the outdoor ashtrays that many shelters now have, or buy one of those clever portable ash trays and take your stubbed butt with you. Cigarette filters are not biodegradable and they take years and years to degrade. They cause fires. Birds and small animals think they’re food and eat them. The rain washes them into our water supply. Yuck. Two simple ways to adjust your attitude towards trash, but they can make a huge difference. They don’t require money or extra time, just effort. Let’s all make it our resolution for summer: take your trash. If possible, take a bit extra. With no more litter being added to our neighbourhood, a little effort is all that will be required to get rid of that which remains. Eventually, we might become known as Thornhill – The Clean City. I remember another city around here once being called something like that. Between now and the end of the year, let’s pull a fast one and grab that title for us. |
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