A Simple Way To Improve The World Around You

Tired of seeing litter everywhere? Here’s how to fix that.

I love walks.

There’s something about walking that calms the soul. Whether’s it walking in nature or walking in a big city, I love to get outside and stretch my legs.

Since I came back home from a six-month road trip around Europe, there’s one thing I’ve noticed a lot off on my walks…

Rubbish, everywhere!

I don’t whether this is an issue in the UK, or it’s a problem elsewhere, but I don’t remember seeing so much rubbish when I was on the road.

The only time I can remember seeing so much rubbish in one place is when I went to Palermo last year. However, that might be because of the mafia’s influence in the city.

No matter where I go for a walk, be it in the woods, or if I walk into the city near where I live, I see rubbish all around me.

Plastic bottles on the floor, chocolate wrappers littering the ground and beer bottles flung into the grass. It’s negligent and a problem that says a lot about us as a species.

Cutting down on plastic is the easy answer to the problem, but that is easier said than done. When the production of plastic is increasing, it might take a while before plastic is removed from our lives.

In the meantime, the best thing we can do is to simply limit the amount of rubbish we throw away. If you love walking as much as me, there is an easy solution to contribute to solving this problem.

If you dislike pollution and littering and value the upkeep of the environment we share with everyone and must preserve for future generations, this solution will make a small, but noticeable difference.

Bag It Up

I promised you a simple solution and here it is. Next time you go on a walk, take a bag with you and whenever you see a piece of plastic or rubbish on the floor, in the grass or anywhere for that matter, pick it up and put it in your bag.

It couldn’t be easier!

I have been doing this for a month now, and it has a made difference, even if it’s a small one. I’ve noticed that some of the routes I walk are cleaner than they used to be and it’s made me feel better too.

I used to hate walking past all that rubbish and feeling helpless and guilty for not doing anything. It’s a blight on the environment and a stain on our species.

If humans were to be wiped from the face of the Earth tomorrow, one of the legacies of our time here would be the sheer amount of plastic waste we left behind.

It’s staggering when you think about it. If it’s bad in one part of the world, imagine what it is like across the globe. The piles of rubbish in Palermo, a canal filled with litter in the Philippines, plastic bottles lining a walk up to the top of a mountain in San Sebastian, these are just a few of the places I’ve seen mounds of plastic waste.

You can’t pick it all up, I realise that. Of course, once you do pick it up, it’s likely to be replaced eventually. However, that is no reason to do nothing about it.

If we all thought like this the world would become one large landfill site and we would suffocate under the weight of our wastefulness.

Better packaging, better education and more awareness of the effects of plastic pollution on the environment are needed. While we will only have a minimal impact on a global scale, we can make a big impact at the local level.

Picking up litter in the area around where you live is easy to do. Simply take a bag with you when you walk and place whatever rubbish you find into it.

Lead by example. When people see someone doing something they are more likely to follow. Educate people about the effects of plastic pollution and how they can make better choices, which avoid more plastic being thrown away.

The good thing is that society at large has woken up to the plastic problem and the issues it’s creating. While this is only a drop in the ocean, small steps lead to big strides in progress.

We have to start somewhere, the alternative is not worth considering. We are on this planet for such a small time, it would be a shame to leave it in a worse state than when we came into it.

If we don’t act now, we may do exactly that.