"Be wise today so you don't cry tomorrow." EA Bucchianeri
As I take my little puppy for walks she teaches me so much. She picks up rubbish and brings it to me. Now when we walk I will be taking a rubbish bag with me and bringing home the rubbish that is left on the walkways and streets we travel. What a wonderful lesson she shared with me.
Her behaviour reminded me that there is no action that we take that doesn't have repercussions many years later. The author of the quote this week is EA Bucchianeri, originally from the old Wild West, Nevada.
This quote reminds me of how much we take for granted about how we live now.
I am pleased to see we are becoming aware of who will clean up for us tomorrow.
It breaks my heart when I watch people in our beautiful country litter. Stuff thrown out of cars, which falls beside the road, ends up in our gutters and our waterways. I watch people leaving fast food places without putting their rubbish in the bins provided, and others dropping their bags and uneaten food on the city streets. We seem to not know or have forgotten that there is an act in the New Zealand Legislation called the Litter Act 1979 (with a few updates) that says … "Deposit of litter in public place or on private land (1) Every person commits an offence and is liable on conviction, in the case of an individual, to a fine not exceeding $5,000 or, in the case of a body corporate, to a fine not exceeding $20,000, who deposits any litter or, having deposited any litter, leaves it — (a)in or on a public place; or (b)in or on private land without the consent of its occupier."
Maybe making this legislation active might remind some of us that it is illegal to litter.
Maybe we need a new slogan "Whanganui a sustainable clean city. Bin it, win it".
We hear quite a bit about hygiene-based factors — drink-ability of water, waste removal and quality of sewage schemes, yet the most visible indicator of a dirty city is litter, so easily cleaned up by each of us taking responsibility and nicely reminding visitors to do the same.
