This photograph shows a guy employed by a local “business improvement district” to pick up litter, the “BID” on the gray trash bag and his coat/uniform show. How do we reach this level of failure?

In principle we shouldn’t litter. For that matter, with all the talk about circular economies and reaching “net zero,” shouldn’t we not produce goods that could become litter? Doesn’t New York City have a sanitation department?

Let’s look at the number of failures of people violating their values, policy, and so on that we reach a private organization picking up litter.

1. People aren’t using trash cans
2. The sanitation department isn’t cleaning litter. On the contrary, it motivates people creating waste since we paid for it to be cleaned
3. The Business Improvement District isn’t getting all the litter
4. People aren’t practicing Reduce, reuse, recycle
5. The US fantasy of business efficiency isn’t reducing waste
6. The federal government isn’t enforcing the Constitution’s mandate that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law since pollution and depletion deprive people of them
7. Our culture is violating its claimed values of Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You and Leave It Better Than You Found It

After all those failures, I still end up picking up dozens of pieces of litter on many days, making almost no visible difference. Tons still make it into nature.

What abysmal failure by everyone involved.

We can do better.

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