“Leave Only Your Footprints” is an anti-litter campaign slogan I remember from my childhood… (continued)
…Lead by example in your community, teach our youth (and the elders that never learned!) to show some respect for all communities and the planet where we all live.
“Leave Only Your Footprints” is an anti-litter campaign slogan I remember from my childhood growing up on Tybee Island, GA. This must be a big part of when I learned to not litter, although I’m sure my family taught me too with their huge respect for nature that they passed on to me. After a quick search on Google I can see that this campaign has been used by many beachside communities and natural habitat environments to encourage people to use trash cans instead of throwing trash on the ground or leaving it behind when spending time somewhere.
As an outdoor enthusiast I occasionally go camping or have other outings with my friends from the South Florida Jeep Club. We always practice “taking out what we brought in” and often even taking out much more of what others that were there before us left behind when they did not use this practice. Littering has always been a pet-peeve of mine whenever I see others do it. Even when spitting out gum on the ground I will chastise my friends if I ever saw them do it. It always seems that I’m the one to step in the sticky mess. Ew!
I’ve also called the police when I’ve witnessed people throwing bags of fast food garbage out the window of their cars on the road. Of course I tell them first that it is a non-emergency call so that I do not abuse the highway patrol service number, then I gladly report the guilty vehicle’s license tag and location. I don’t know if anything has ever become of the reports (only 2 that I can recall) but it makes me feel better that maybe they won’t completely get away with it.
I’ve noticed recently that this pet-peeve of littering is more than annoying to me when my most recent witnessing was of a man standing on the sidewalk across the intersection where I was waiting to make my turn. I watched him finish his drink, then throw his cup or can on the ground, and walk away. He was too far away for me to yell at him. I saw that when I made my turn and continued in the same direction he was walking that it was only one block to the nearest trash can. How lazy can one really be? Seriously. He was already going that way! I’m sure he must have passed it. I ended up being in a bad mood the remainder of the night as I thought about his lack of respect for our planet.
Along those same lines, another thing that has continued to bother me is the laziness of some of the city’s sanitation department workers. I happen to live on the inside corner of my street and whenever there is loose trash on the ground of my neighborhood, much of it ends up blowing in my front yard. I’ve seen several times, if I’m home on trash day, that the garbage truck (which is now automated) when picking up the cans to empty has a piece of trash that falls to the ground instead of inside the dumpster, the garbage man that is standing there to monitor the automation does nothing to pick it up. He’ll just leave it there, ignoring it, and then it blows in my yard.
Now that I have a puppy, Lulu, that I walk daily throughout the neighborhood, I see just how much litter is on the ground - particularly in front of the school on the next block. I’ve been telling myself for the past couple of weeks that I should bring a bag with me to begin collecting some of this garbage, only in our haste to get out the door (Lulu gets so excited to go for her walks) I always forget to bring one of those plastic grocery bags that I recycle. This morning I was in luck. A grocery bag had blown up against my fence right were we walk out of the yard. Instead of throwing it in the garbage bin I took it with us and before we turned the 2nd corner to begin the walk in front of the school my bag was already full. Lulu was very good at spotting the litter. From now on, it is our mission to take one with us on every walk to collect garbage and clean up our neighborhood.
My neighbors farther down the street have been beginning to notice me more now that I have a dog and I walk through the neighborhood where I have always kept quiet and stayed to myself before. However, I tend to stand out when driving down the street anyways as I am a girl driving a lifted Jeep in the middle of a community where Jeeps aren’t as popular. I hope that besides me and Lulu they will also begin noticing my new campaign to clean up our community and that it encourages more of them to do the same while teaching the young children that live here to show respect for the Earth too.
I think I’ll look into participating in a beach clean-up or organizing some sort of nature trail clean-up event in the future with the South Florida Jeep Club. Let’s face it, even if there are those street sweepers in your town that drive by to automatically pick up the trash (another very lame excuse I’ve heard by litterers before when I was living in downtown Savannah), we wouldn’t need to spend so much of our tax money on the extra sanitation efforts that could be better used for road repairs, city beautification, or extra education funds. Leaving the trash there to collect without any efforts to remove it leads to diminished values of our neighborhoods, breeding grounds for pests, foul odors, disease, contamination of our ground water, and it simply looks terrible. Who wants to live in a landfill? Not me.
I urge you to join me to “leave only your footprints.” Lead by example in your community, teach our youth (and the elders that never learned!) to show some respect for all communities and the planet where we all live.
Update Oct. 11th, 2009
Lulu & I have committed to reviving this old campaign and in the past few days we’ve already picked up several bags of trash in my neighborhood. During Saturday afternoon’s walk, Lulu inspired me to design new merchandise and set up a storefront on CafePress to sell t-shirts, dog-shirts, mugs, and other items for purchase to help spread the word. Get your merchandise here.
For more resources on anti-litter campaigns and education please visit the following links.
November 12, 2009 – Latest Update: Help Wanted
Shame on those who disrespect the landscape.. I like your viewpoint…
That’s fantastic Stephanie. I love the idea. As we all focus on giving back and our inherent responsibility to this planet, the world is shifting into something even more phenomenal. I love this place!