Picture this: A four year old steps out of his house sucking a lollipop. He is on his way out for dinner with his mum and her friend. He drops the lollipop wrapper as they make their way to the restaurant. Almost as soon as the wrapper has been dropped the boy goes back to hunt around for it, his mum says not to worry as it is cold and dark but the little boy is determined to do the right thing. He finds the wrapper eventually and gives it to his mum to discard. What I loved about this rather inconsequential story is that this four year old knew not to litter.
Now I love London, I really love London, sometimes I think I love it more than your average born and bred Londoner but I have a gripe: London streets are not clean as they should be. Yes I’m generalising but people do litter here, I see it all the time and footpaths can be disgusting and councils don’t always do enough. Today I was walking home from the supermarket and I saw a bunch of school kids munching away on their goodies and as they walked they proceeded to drop the packaging. Then you have smokers who think it totally okay to drop their butts on the ground. It is something I have never got use to, after living in New Zealand and Australia where you just don’t litter. ‘Be a tidy kiwi‘ was how I was brought up to be.
As the four year old shows you are never too young to develop your social conscience and if that fails I think fines for littering are a valid way to go. This city is pretty amazing, just think how much better it would be if there was no more litter to contend with.
Love
27 November, 2013 at 05:14
Nice, however if you lived here I think you might be a little sad.
27 November, 2013 at 16:32
Don’t say that about my Welly 🙂 In any case it will always be miles ahead of London town sadly.