When a friend and I were much younger our parents took us to Atlantic City in New Jersey. It's got like... gambling stuff, arcades, a beach, and maybe a boardwalk. It was pretty dirty and expensive and lousy, that's all I can remember. But my friend and I we had killer imaginations. We wrote a distress letter saying that we were stranded on the island of Borneo and needed help and did our best to throw the soda bottles far out over the ocean.

Somehow it didn't occur to us that this is in direct contrast to the saving the [rain]forest efforts we did when we were younger than even that, inspired in part by Disney's The Last Rainforest (or something like that, I think my inspiration was actually the fairy, not the message LOL). When I lived in the suburbs in upstate NY sometimes I would go back into the woods on my own little recycling adventures. One time I found a very small, old-style soda can. It was exactly the sort they used to have in airplanes. I always thought it must've fallen from the sky somehow.

We are so negligent when we litter, it's not until we clean that we can really pick up on the effects of our negligence. That stuff can stay there forever, and the earth may not "know" too well what to do with it, let alone the lifeforms around it.

very important messages, also helped trigger nostalgic memories. thanks for sharing. i think it's also important to learn to be grateful, start valuing things. if you were to see it as garbage you wouldn't throw it away so freely. but this is stuff that quenched thirst, that provided, that helped sustain you and your family. if you treat even water like garbage... what do you expect to make out of everything else in your life?