If ever there was a sign and symptom of what has gone wrong in a deeply divided and unequal SA, it is different communities’ attitudes towards, and experience of, litter.
Many people in areas with efficient waste removal, access to bins and other such basic service provision which can seem like a luxury, have grown up knowing that littering is unethical, detrimental to the environment and just plain selfish.
When people feel empowered and take up an active role in keeping the land clean, children’s and adults’ health improves, water quality improves, and mental health improves.
Then again, some of the most entitled people are the same ones who believe they can do what they want, and if that means littering, then yes, you’ll see a hand coming out of the window of a swanky BMW to drop whatever junk was inside the car.
So, in brief, being middle class doesn’t mean you’re diligent about discarding it appropriately, but it could mean you’ve grown up with the luxury of being taught it’s wrong and having the resources available to do what you need to do.
If you have grown up in such a suburb or area, you’ve likely never had to wonder where to throw your rubbish because there are always bins around and, as if by magic, a truck drives past once a week and takes your junk away.
The flipside of this is the communities in which a great many South Africans live — communities where waste removal might be haphazard at best and non-existent at worst.
Or perhaps waste removal has been efficient, but a legacy of the myth that “littering creates jobs” has persisted and been handed down from one generation to the next.
Stereotyping and judging across the wealth gap are just as useless as justifying or condoning littering.
The simple truth: it has to stop.
Some argue that poor service delivery is to blame.
That is true.
Some argue littering is a form of passive resistance in communities that have been all but neglected by the government even after more than two decades into democracy.
That is also true.
But litter just hurts the very communities that are already hurt by the same inequality that has excluded them from sound service delivery.
We need to move away from the mentality that encouraging a community to keep the streets clean is a way of blaming that community for what is essentially poor service delivery.
When people feel empowered and take up an active role in keeping the land clean, children’s and adults’ health, water quality and mental health improve.
Sure, waste removal is a basic right, but throwing your empty chip packet, cigarette butt or plastic bag on the ground is not going to hurry the government up any time soon.
It’s simply going to hurt you and your community and the children growing up in that area.
Some argue those in the country’s poorest communities have bigger things to worry about than litter, but actually, litter is the one social problem over which absolutely everyone has some agency, and that makes it low-hanging fruit to work towards a better life and a cleaner country and planet.
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