Picking Up a Zillion Pieces of Litter

I always bring bags/gloves/grabber with me whenever I visit the local national park. The rubbish is particularly bad in popular picnic spots, like the areas around Audley^1. The NPWS staff do a great job of keeping the parks clean, but they can't get everything. You'd be shocked how quickly you can fill a garbage bag on a short walk. The most common items by far are disposable coffee cups and cigarette packets (with nearly 100% imported packaging). Just make sure you're careful about snakes in summer. I once put my hand within striking distance when picking up a chip packet! Some of them are so well camouflaged.

1: https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/things-to-do/cafes-and-...

Littered across this website are countless gems and gotchas to make you think about the consequences of your purchases and actions. In particular the treasures he has found are quite surprising, 100 phones?! Just from looking for trash? The author is 47 I think and he's been doing stuff for 17 years. I have some of my own cool found trash collections too. The trash you find revels the personality of the place.

Be sure to check the second page: https://www.sixstepstobetterhealth.com/money.html

If every person picked up a piece of litter a day, the world would be exceptionally cleaner quite quickly.

I make a point to pick up any I see; you can carry dog waste bags if you're scared to touch things.

Perhaps the coolest website I’ve seen this year. The amount of dedication is incredible. If you look at this cynically you will get nowhere, but if you realize something like this can inspire the next Boyan Slat, it’s fantastic.

One of these puppies and some plastic bags to get trash when I take walks.

https://www.harborfreight.com/36-in-pickup-and-reach-tool-61...

Use the right tool for the job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKHLG1iOBUA

https://greenmachines.com/

I'm starting to suspect I might be cynical. I was pretty impressed at the "1,000,000 cigarette butts that I removed from the environment" but I couldn't help but think "moved into what?" which brought this (https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM) to mind:

   [Interviewer:] Into another environment….

   [Senator Collins:] No, no, no. it’s been towed beyond the environment, it’s not in the environment

   [Interviewer:] Yeah, but from one environment to another environment.

   [Senator Collins:] No, it’s beyond the environment, it’s not in an environment. It has been towed beyond the environment.

   [Interviewer:] Well, what’s out there?

   [Senator Collins:] Nothing’s out there…

At ten seconds each, it would take seventy straight days to collect all those cigarettes... And he had store all this trash just to take a picture.

I don't understand why the local governments do such a poor job at cleaning litter. Do they not understand how bad it is? In NYC, the Bronx is utterly filthy.