Over the weekend, I visited just about every blog on the MCB blogroll. As I mentioned, I was smitten with Bridgett, but I also fell in love with Planet Trash. I read through the entirety of the archives and was fascinated. And disgusted. Here’s a snippet for you:

One of my favorite songs is Joan Osborne’s “One of Us.”

What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us?

Some poor slob removed his clothes and just left them in the road. I don’t understand, but I’m glad that “God is not one of us.”

As I mentioned before, I’m from Memphis. While I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, there was this organization (that’s still going strong) called Memphis City Beautiful that did lots of public outreach and education–particularly through schools–about litter. I specifically remember that calling someone a “litterbug” was right up there with “butthole” on the list of worst elementary school insults. But it seems that a lot of people just didn’t get the same message. I live on a corner where there’s a stop sign and pretty much have to pick up trash on a daily basis. What went wrong in these people’s lives that made them think it’s okay to throw your garbage out a window? I’m going to assume it’s just a matter of education rather than just willful disregard for our planet (and property owners).

Funny enough, litter and garbage has been on others’ minds as well. I just got a message from Kate of the Nashville Hiking Meetup Group who’d like to organize a litter pickup hike. It’s an excellent idea and I am all for it.

And I was just talking to Ivy the other day about reusable grocery bags. She’s gotten a few of the Kroger bags, but I prefer Baggu bags. They fold up really small–small enough to fit in a pocket or purse and certainly to keep in the glove compartment of the car so you’ll have them handy for not only trips to the grocery, but Target, Old Navy and anywhere else you get a bag. Seriously, who needs yet another Old Navy bag–AMIRITE? So I bought six and I just love them. No matter how many times you use them, they still fold up small and fit in their pouch. If more people used them (or other reusable bags), perhaps we’d see less of this.

Incidentally, if you have a bunch of plastic grocery bags around, be sure to take them back to the grocery. If not to re-use, then to recycle. Most grocery stores have bins at the front of the store for recycling those bags. They’ll also take the plastic newspaper sleeves (for those of you still getting dead trees delivered to you–unsolicited or not).

UPDATE: Well, whaddya know–Sarcastic Mom’s on the same wavelength. I wonder what the piqued interest can be attributed to…is there an epidemic of litter in Nashville? Or are we just fed up?