Trying picking up your own trash

Trying picking up your own trash

In writing this letter, I may be upsetting the apple cart. But many other people in West Chicago have, in effect, turned the garbage can upside down that it hardly matters that apples are rolling with the trash on the ground.

When I go on a walk along the Prairie Path, crossing Prince Crossing from Main Street, or when I go to the library, passing Main Park Apartments, and all the homes and businesses between my door and the circulation desk, what do I see? Plastic bags, drinking straws, crushed beer cans, crumpled wrappers, broken glass, empty water bottles, aluminum foil, batteries and the occasional dirty diaper — all lying in the grass or on the pavement, detritus from the community’s collective lack of accountability.

What sort of idiot or mob does this? Toss a half-finished packet of sweet-and-sour sauce out the car window? I see litter nearly everywhere in the county, but some towns are cleaner than others. Some municipalities actually enforce their anti-littering laws, and of course some people actually care about their neighborhoods. By the looks of it, in the sidewalks and parking lots around Neltnor Avenue and Main Street, and in the blocks surrounding downtown, it’s open season on sanitation.

This is “where history and progress meet” indeed — you can tell from the trash, where the meeting took place.

But here’s the good news: You don’t need to be rich or educated or white or brown or young or old to be responsible. Simply throw your own (just your own) trash into a waste container. The entire town (the whole world) will be cleaner and better as a result. Try it. It’s easier than chewing gum.

Alexander Lee

West Chicago