Friday, March 15, 2013

Weekly Wayfinding: Catalogue Litter on the Street

Litter Bug

Today, I noticed litter on Church Street. We all know what litter is: trash that is thrown on the side of the road instead of in the trash. But on Church Street, I noticed litter of a different sort. While yes, there was the McDonald’s Cafe coffee cup in the snow bank, there was also chunks of granite from a path somewhere on campus. On down the street, there was an orange construction cone leaning on a snow bank. Finally, at the junction with Scholars Walk, there was a traffic cone on top of a lamp post. This led me to wonder, is litter only trash? Or does litter encompass these anomalies I witnessed today? I believe the granite was litter because it was obviously from somewhere else on campus and just left in the middle of the sidewalk to trip people. The cone in the snowbank was litter, because, while originally it served a purpose, it was currently cluddering up an already dirty snow pile and becoming a larger scale model of the McDonald’s cup. Finally, the cone on the lamp post was definitely litter, because someone had deliberately put this cone where it didn't belong, causing someone else to have to get it down. I look at litter a bit differently now and will continue to keep my eyes out for the untraditional litter bugs.





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