Day 150: It’s Garbage Day! What a Mess!
Today’s GIVE hit me on the street at 7 am this morning. I could have walked around it or over it but I decided to stop and GIVE to the planet as well as my neighbour.
Day 150: Give 150
Every morning I walk my dog early before the day gets to busy. It was cold this morning. Very unusually cold for Vancouver. I felt like I was in Ontario – cold, windy and snowy. What’s with that! Where was my rain and balmy spring weather. I moved from cold temperatures a number of years ago so I wouldn’t have to walk my dog and freeze. I bundled up and off we went. It happened to be garbage day to and everyone in my neighbourhood knows not to put their garbage out to early for a number of reasons. Bears would be the main one as this time of year as they start to come out of hibernation and are hungry. They come down off the mountain and into our garbages. Not unusual to see a bear walking around our hood even though it is very well populated. The other one are crows. They can spot a good garbage pick a mile away and will scatter your garbage for an entire block picking away until they get a good piece of grub. Seems today the ravens were out in full force and everywhere we went my neighbours garbage was scattered on the sidewalk and road.
I have a black Labrador retriever. If you know anything about these dogs they can smell food about 4 miles away. When I came across my first pile of scattered garbage today my first thought was to run in the opposite direction. I knew my dog Brooklyn would be happy to not only pick up the garbage but dig through it herself and get any bits she possibly could. She has dragged me off my feet more than once for a nibble she could smell on the ground. It would have been much easier for me to turn the other cheek, run past the garbage and get back to my warm house. But I couldn’t do it. It was scattered on the road (cars were already driving over it) and pieces of paper and plastic were flying around the street, I am sure they were trying to find their way to the ocean in the cold wind and clog up our water just a little more with pollution. (the ocean is just a short walk down the road)
I wrapped the leash tight around my hand, took a deep breath and crossed the road to start my garbage picking. If anyone saw me they either thought I was nuts, lived at the house or was truly a saint for picking up the mess with my lab pulling me in every direction. But my garbage picking didn’t stop there.
I headed home got my son ready for his music class and we walked through our neighbourhood. It seemed our garbage men had missed the truck a number of times today. My son kept alerting me to stopped and pick up the garbage everywhere it had missed the truck. That’s what I get for teaching my son how to keep the planet clean at the age of 3! We picked up left over garbage at at least 4 houses on route and you know what – it felt GOOD!
Our world is such a beautiful place and it is one of my pet peeves that it has gotten so messy with miss laid garbage. It may have been cold today and I could have kept walking to get to our destinations a little faster but instead I “gave” to my neighbours so they didn’t have to pick up the mess and to our planet so it doesn’t have to absorb the toxic waste we keep leaving behind.
Today think about stopping just once. How long does it really take to pick up just a few pieces of garbage or help your neighbour. This is the one GIVE we can all find time for in our day.
Time Commitment: 5 minutes in total
Cost: 0