On Littering

The other day I was walking along Market Street and I noticed a woman drinking a very big energy drink from a can bigger than her head. The kind that split their nutrition facts into 8 servings. She turned it bottom-side up to get every last sugary, artificially flavored drop. As she came down from her motion she simply let go of the can. It dropped to the curb at the bus stop she was standing at. She smacked her lips and let out a satisfied "Ahhh" as I began to boil with rage. Before I even formulated what I was going to do I already began to do it. I said to her, in a very sarcastically nice manner, "Excuse me ma'am. You dropped something." She looked around her immediate area and said "What? No I didn't." at which point I made her notice the behemoth of a can she had so graciously thrown to the ground. At this point another man walking by had brought her attention to the same thing. She told me she didn't want it anymore and if I wanted it, I could pick it up. I went on to tell her how it wasn't mine and I was just doing her a favor by pointing it out. She said something along the lines of "Well it's trash now." in a very mean manner to which i slyly responded "Doesn't that belong in a trash can then?"

She yelled at me incoherently as I continued to walk by, but I know I did the right thing. (She was also ten feet from a trash can.)

If there is one thing that pisses me off more than anything it's when people purposely leave their trash on the ground because they are too lazy to find a trash can. The average littering individual may believe their contribution won't matter when looking at the grand scale of how dirty our city can sometimes look. But if EVERY littering individual just casually took four seconds out of their life to approach a trash can, we wouldn't have such a filthy city. Hold on to your bottle caps, your cigarette wrapper, your plastic bags etc. Because as an individual you're just a lazy slob, but as a group of lazy slobs we gain an image that isn't as easy to just leave by a curb and hope someone else takes care of.