Litter and Waste

Walking to bus stops or t school, you tend to see a lot of trash, whether it is litter or on the curb for pickup.

At a bus stop, I spied a complex that had many, many, MANY black plastic bags full of leaves at the curb. This really distressed me. Plastic doesn't break down very readily, so the leaves, usually very degradable, are stuck in the bag at a landfill! And I doubt they gathered that many leaves with a rake--they had to have used a leaf blower. Those seem so unnecessary and use so much energy. If that landscaper or complex had a compost bin, they could create rich soil for the spring planting! And there were already leaves all over the ground again, so it didn't make much difference.

Back at home, we have a little grove of bamboo and it tends to shed leaves all year long. There are so many that my mom can't pick them all up. Instead, she tends to just let them fall and they act as mulch in her planting beds underneath. It works quite well. The leaves keep grass and weeds from growing, they fall off and around the larger plants she wants there, and they break down into the soil eventually. Whenever she wants to add a new plant to that bed, she just scoops a bunch with the rake and moves them to the compost bin. And voila! There is a clear place for her plant to go.

On campus, the landscaping tends to change with the seasons, but part of the year, the "mulch" is actually just large amounts of pine needles! These are particularly good because they are acidic (I think) and deter certain pests once they break down into the soil.

Walking to school one day, I say a bunch of styrofoam peanuts scattered EVERYWHERE. At first, I was really upset that someone had littered them all over the sidewalk and grass, but then I realized the alternative was to be bagged and stuck in the landfill. Subject to the elements, they had a better chance of breaking down in the grass. And they might have been those water soluble ones, which definitely shouldn't go in a trash bag -- though I doubt it. Funny how we have this gut reaction to not litter when in reality, some things would decompose better "littered" everywhere than in a plastic bag!