June 23, 2026

"Readin' the classics and pickin' up plastics: Litterature."

I'm a big fan of volunteer litter picker uppers, and why wouldn't it entail reading the classics? 12 more episodes: here.
Posted by Ann Althouse at 8:55 AM
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2 comments:

Jamie said...

In the Toronto neighborhood where we've been living for the past three weeks, litter is everywhere. This was also true in one of the London neighborhoods where we lived just after college, on student work visas: a commuting neighborhood for what Americans would call the (probably lower) middle class (I've never been clear on how American people's use of "middle class" differs from English people's), with many newish immigrants. This Toronto neighborhood also has young professionals, but I'd say it's largely the same demographic as that long-ago London one.

Anyway. Trash everywhere. I've finally started picking up the less gross stuff and depositing it in the ubiquitous litter bins, grumbling to myself all along about "five steps, they only would have had to take five steps." The classics have not entered my mind.

It seems to me that you can accurately gauge average neighborhood income by measuring amount of trash. I'm not sure why. I do know that it's not because higher-income neighborhoods have trash elves who pick up after the littering rich. So why, in lower-income areas, do people just crumple their sandwich wrappers and drop them on the ground instead of holding them for the five more steps to get to the bin?

TL;DR - richer people aren't rich just because of goodd luck. In some way(s), they're different from poorer people. The social-engineering questions are, can that difference be taught, and is it causative?

6/23/26, 9:25 AM
Anthony said...

I live in a semi-upscale gated place (AZ) and I and others have gone on informal Litter Patrols. Might be because it trends to older residents. Not as much lately, because the new landscaping company we hired is better about picking stuff up.

6/23/26, 10:27 AM

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