Earth Day ~ How to do your part

Save the planet...drink out of a reusable tiki mug!!

Remember: Limes are a renewable resource and Rose's Grenadine takes 1000 years to break down.

I took my birth control pill, does that count?

I served mai tais and suffering bastards to my friends yesterday, so one designated driver brought back 5 of them instead of having them all use their own car.

I took my travel mug to starbucks TWICE to cash in on their 'free beverage with travel mug' deal, especially for Earth Day.

Then I bought 1000 square feet of exotic hardwood flooring. I would have LOVED to purchase bamboo, bamboo being a sustainable resource, but there wasn't any up for auction.

I also listened to baby birds chirp in my selvaged cedar shake birdhouse. That made me feel a little better.

I planted 3 trees today.

I used the toilet 7 times before flushing.

I am in charge of my council's education campaigns for stormwater. That is my job, trying to get people not to litter and understand that drains flow untreated into the river, so the drain may as well be the river.

Tonight is the first home game for our local football club and also the start of a year long campaign encouraging fans to "don't be a tosser at the footy" and put their litter in the bin. This morning I just went out and sprayed "dont be a tosser" and "nepean river starts here" on footpaths and drains everywhere. It will be interesteting to see what results it gets with the crowd demographics of our area :)

Ive gone for more "look after our new stadium" angle rather than "dont litter because it damages the environment" because that is what people will respond to better. We are also encouraging people to call their mates "tossers" if they litter, so people wont litter because of the public humiliation. We want to make it socially unacceptable to litter.

On 2006-04-27 20:47, hewey wrote:
That is my job, trying to get people not to litter and understand that drains flow untreated into the river, so the drain may as well be the river.

You need to make a movie of an old Aborigine chief walking around Sidney's worst polluted areas and then get a good close up of him crying.

When I was a wee tot (in the 60s), I clearly remember that it was perfectly acceptable to toss your waste out of the car window wherever you saw fit to do so. Done with your McDonald's cheeseburger? Toss the wrapper out the window. Last cigarette in the pack (not me, I was a wee tot)? Crumple up the pack and toss it out the window. Drain the beer can (ditto)? Out the window!

Seriously, I remember my family driving down the highway and there would be all kinds of litter collecting in the ditches on the sides of the road. It was no big deal. It was what everyone did. Then came that commercial...

From Snopes: viewers watched an Indian paddle his canoe up a polluted and flotsam-filled river, stream past belching smokestacks, come ashore at a litter-strewn river bank, and walk to the edge of a highway, where the occupant of a passing automobile thoughtlessly tossed a bag of trash out the car window to burst open at the astonished visitor's feet. When the camera moved upwards for a close-up, a single tear was seen rolling down the Indian's face as the narrator dramatically intoned: "People start pollution; people can stop it."

After that commercial it was as if people, for the most part, just stopped throwing crap their all over the place. For the first time in my wee life people started caring about the ugliness of littering and in a very short period of time the landscape had less and less brown paper bags and styrofoam cartons gathering in the ditches and along city streets!

At least that's how I remember it. And since I was a wee lad at the time, I didn't really trust my memory, so I googled it and found this article on Snopes that confirms my recollections.

Three events which occurred during the year between March 1970 and March 1971 helped bring the concept of "ecology" into millions of homes and made it a catchword of the era. One was the first annual Earth Day, observed on 21 March 1970. The second was Look magazine's promotion of the ecology flag in its 21 April 1970 edition, a symbol that was soon to become as prominent a part of American culture as the ubiquitous peace sign. The third — and perhaps the most effective and unforgettable — was the television debut of Keep America Beautiful's landmark "People Start Pollution, People Can Stop It" public service ad on the second Earth Day in March 1971.

Snopes has a wee copy of the original clip at the bottom of the article. Pretty cool that one little commercial could have such a profound impact.

Thats pretty cool Kono.

Most people are aware that littering is bad (but thats a loaded question, like asking people in a survey "are you a rascist?" - of course they're gonna say no). The issue is that people don't care or in some cases too lazy to use the bin. Part of it is making it easier to do the right thing (more bins, better positioned etc). But it is also a case of assisting people to change their behaviours. People know smoking is bad but continue to do so. Just telling people that littering is bad will not make them stop. But if we can use their value system to facilitate that change in their behaviour, like looking after our footy stadium, then maybe we can reach them.

On 2006-04-28 19:15, Kono wrote:

You need to make a movie of an old Aborigine chief walking around Sidney's worst polluted areas

Wouldn't be too difficult, they don't really have anywhere else to go.

Hewey, I think the 'Don't be a tosser' campaign was truly inspired and needs to be adopted wordwide

[ Edited by: cheekytiki 2006-04-30 06:26 ]