Friday 29 December 2006
Today is the last work day of the year! An Argentine tradition is to tear out all of the pages from your planner and throw them out the window on the last day of work. (Also, schoolkids tear up their old papers, tests, and notebooks on the last day of school.) This made for a lovely white swirling snow as Ryan and I walked through the business district this morning, but the beauty of it only lasted about ten seconds, before all that paper ended up on the ground, as litter.
Trash is a pretty big problem here in general, as people often throw their wrappers and bottles on the ground. There are tons of public trash cans around, however, nearly one on every block, but rarely do you see people taking advantage of them. I've even seen people toss papers on the ground when they are literally two steps from a garbage can! This especially drives me crazy when I ride the train out to my classes every day. The station I leave from is one of the poorer ones, where things are dirty and stuff often doesn't work. So, I guess people don't mind polluting it a little more. You see bottles, wrappers, trash thrown out the windows of the train, onto the tracks, onto the platforms, on the floor inside the train.
It makes me so angry, when it would take so little to throw it in the right place, when all that's needed is a change of mind-set. The bins are in place, the opportunities exist, all it would take is the decision to have a cleaner city.
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