January 30, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.
Are you a ‘trash’ Bermudian?
This particular area can only be passed by people in cars, on bikes, or on foot. No one actually lives in that space. Nor does any residence or other building adjoin it. The nearest building is a residence that’s more than fifty metres away — and high up on a steep scramble-up bank. This residence is not within easy walking or throwing distance.
So what did I collect?
I won’t swamp you with the details. I filled one large 50 gallon ‘blue bag’ with enough bottles that I had to stop before the bag became too heavy to lift. I got a second blue bag for the overflow from the first. I filled another five large black bags with trash. In all, I spent an hour and a quarter clearing this small room-sized area. When I’d finished, it looked clean. It looked clean because there were no longer any large bits of obvious trash. On closer examination, though, you’d have seen — and I did still see — lots more non-organic non-perishing bits and pieces.
So my seventy-five minutes of effort — one minute for every two square feet and filling trash bags at the rate of a newly filled bag every eleven minutes — had really only ‘reduced’ the visible trash in that room-size open space. I had only made a ‘dent’ in the trash problem — in that one room-sized area.
Bermuda has lots of room-sized areas that are covered with ‘bushes’. Walk or run by and look closely at these room-sized areas. You’ll see trash, trash, trash… Zip by in a car or on a bike and you won’t. You won’t because you’re moving too fast and your eyes are quite properly fixed on the road ahead. So, all you’ll see, and that only with your peripheral vision, are pretty green ‘bushes’.
But six bags of trash will still be in the bushes that you zip past. Some of the trash that gets into these bushes comes from Bermudians who pass by in clean cars and on shiny cycles. These ‘vooze’ their empties into the bushes from their passing cars or bikes. A lot also comes from Bermudians who pass by on foot and who, finished with a bag of chips or a bottle of drink, vooze that empty bag into the bushes — as generations of Bermudians have tended to do, or they just drop it on the ground, and it gets blown into the bushes. Some of the trash that gets into the bushes is also specifically and especially brought there — and dumped there — instead of taking it to the proper dump on Palmetto Road.
At that room-sized site, I took up enough broken but once properly bagged black trash bags to fill three trash bags. That trash had once been properly bagged as though destined for the Palmetto Road dump — but it never got there. Instead, it was carried to that junction at Robert’s and Parson’s — which is about 600 metres from the free and proper dump on Palmetto Road.
I won’t speculate on why. Nor will I speculate on who. Except this…
Over the years I’ve noticed a consistent phenomenon. At public events, where Bermudians predominate or form the overwhelming majority of spectators or of persons present, I have observed that when the event is over, and all those Bermudian spectators have gone home, they have left behind vast amounts of trash and litter. Cans, bottles, plates, plastic cutlery, empty chip bags, changed [i.e. full] diapers.
A native problem?
See the hillside at the National Exhibition after that day’s batch of Bermudians have left. See all the roadsides after everyone has gone home from the traditional ‘May 24’ watching.
But, a little known secret difference. See an area after a crowd that is heavily ‘expat’ has left a space. See how, comparatively, cleaner and trash-free it is.
Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that, by and large, Bermudians are ‘trash’ people, and that by and large ‘expats’ are cleaner.
Of course, I could be wrong; but seven bags of trash, in seventy-five minutes, from one room-size area, says that I am not.[[In-content Ad]]
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