Every Litter-bit Hurts
© by Kim Clark

            When my legs were too short for long hikes, I was carried on the backs of parents and grandparents to experience the earth’s wild places.  Outdoor wonders were handed down in the sparkle of morning dew, the colors of sky and stone, the nests of birds, and the vibrant issue of new life thriving underneath the fallen trunks of a previous generation of trees. 
            “Every Litter-bit Hurts” and “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires” were the first road signs I could read, and they branded my soul with the consciousness of environmental stewardship.  I was taught it sacrilege to leave trash anywhere, and unthinkable to act without respect for living things.  I thought everyone was raised this way. 
            Working as I do nearly every weekend planting trees or improving wildlife habitat, I know the best restoration is to do no harm in the first place.  When a member of an ecosystem is destroyed, those same destructive elements effect an entire web of interdependent living things, including human beings, and we also become threatened.  And there are things once taken, that cannot be put back.
            Not long ago, the Los Angeles City Council approved the downing of 940 mature oaks and the destruction of a 500-acre oak woodland ecosystem to expand Sunshine Canyon Landfill, making room for more trash.  The taking of these trees seemed unspeakable and left me pondering the need for more landfill space.  Why is there so much trash?  Whose trash?  The answer is, my trash, and the trash of thousands of others like me.
            My black trash can empties into that dump.  I am ‘littering’ there, in that beautiful oak woodland that is no more.  Shame on me.  With a heavy heart I open the lid of my black trash can to see…  What is so important to throw away that I must spoil sacred ground?  What is so worth having that its packaging or spent remains destroys what I love and value most?
            Herein I find my need to change.  I need to compost.  I need to know where to take worn out clothing for fiber recycling, what to do with plastic that is not marked with a 1 or 2, or at all, and what to do with styrofoam.  If I can’t buy yoghurt without the unrecyclable tub, then maybe I should go without.  I need cloth napkins.  
            And further, I need a clothesline, a bicycle, a garden, and a thought to how may people this world can support.  I need to hand down a respect for the earth’s precious resources and wild places, even in my urban neighborhood.  I need to sober to the grave consequences of putting anything in the black trash can.  I need not send to know for whom the bell tolls.  It tolls for me.