Boston’s dirty little secret is that it’s a dirty little city. I can’t walk one foot within stepping over a piece of litter, ranging from the innoculous cigarette butts and bottle caps to the obnoxious coffee cups and styrofoam takeout containers. I think that my mind has learned to regard litter as a naturally-occuring byproduct of the cityscape, like leaves in a forest or shells on a beach.
There are numerous environmental factors contributing to Boston’s litter problem. For instance, Boston’s streets evolved from literal cowpaths, and hence are narrow and twisted, leaving little room for trash receptacles. Boston is also windy, with a higher average wind speed than even Chicago, making it difficult to contain even properly-disposed trash. Most damning, the city of Boston is simply riddled with assholes.
Walking to the office this morning, I stood with a mass of pedestrians waiting to cross a side street along Atlantic Avenue. People looked impatiently from the “Don’t Walk” sign to the oncoming cars, but everyone quelled the urge to flagrantly jaywalk across the street at the slightest break in traffic.
Suddenly, a flash of white arrayed from the tinted driver-side window of a large luxury-class passenger vehicle, and something clattered at my feet. I looked down to see a white plastic disposable dental floss wand tottering on the curb. A steady rage boiled as I ticked off the number of social sins associated with this floss wand. A person bought a plastic flossing wand so that they could floss their teeth while driving their oversized car and then toss it out the window at a crowd of pedestrians. And now, it’s sitting in the street, where it will get blown and tossed for months until it meets its ultimate fate… in the harbor, in a landfill, in the throat of a yakking dog.
