A waste collector looks for recyclables in a heap of trash along the polluted hennops river, 1 October 2020, Olifantsfontein. During heavy rains enourmous amounts of pollution gets swept down stream often resulting in floods. Picture: Jacques Nelles
I once had a boyfriend who said he littered so people would have jobs, because someone else was being paid to pick up his trash. He told me this as he threw a beer can out of the car sunroof. If he was trying to annoy me, he succeeded.
By his logic it would have been acceptable to murder him, which I briefly considered: just think of the police, lawyers, judges and prison wardens that murder keeps in work. Without crime, they’d be jobless, or perhaps handing out annoying flyers at traffic lights for a pittance. (Also, please consider taking an annoying flyer from that poor soul at the next intersection, because that’s keeping them employed too.) But I digress.
You know who’s picking up litter at the moment? My son. He recently moved to Cape Town and stays near a beach, so every couple of days he heads out there with a golf club with a spike welded to the end – purchased at a car boot sale – and spends time before work zigzagging across the sand, spiking rubbish.
When the spike is full he scrapes it into a bag; when the bag is full he goes home. He picks up everything – cigarettes, condoms, tampons, takeaway containers, rotting food, endless plastic bottles, beer cans, fishing gut, lost hair extensions, nappies – only drawing the line once at a dead seal.He’s already noticed a difference on his patch.
The trash is often smaller now and harder to see – on its way to becoming microplastics – but he says when his eyes adjust it’s there still, loads of it, enough that it takes about a minute to fill his spike. Yes, there are occasional community group clean-ups, and maybe the odd council worker passes by, but the rubbish is there every single day.
If he keeps it up, maybe someone will name a rubbish truck after him. That’s what happened to the US writer David Sedaris, who walked across stretches of England with a grabber and a rubbish bag, becoming so ubiquitous that the local council christened a new bin lorry in his honour: Pig Pen Sedaris. He even went to the ceremony.
David Sedaris is but one man. So is my son. Let’s all be that man. This December holiday, let’s all keep it clean.
For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.
Download our app and read this and other great stories on the move. Available for Android and iOS.
