Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Letter to the editor

Every day as I walk my dog if I remember to take a trash bag with me, I can pick up at least a bagful of discarded cigarette butts and boxes, candy wrappers, food containers, straws, soft drink cans, plastic lids and more.

The life of a cigarette butt is forever, much like eternity. It might fray and shred on the ground but like matter it cannot be destroyed.

An acquaintance who smokes, after listening to me rail about the situation, pointed out that he is careful to place his cigarette butts in the trash and there just aren’t that many. I opined that I had been a smoker of a pack and a half a day for 25 years before I quit years ago and that throwing away 30 spent cigarette ends each day meant 210 butts would accumulate on the ground weekly. For 100 smokers, that equates to 21,000 each week, assuming that they were also as thoughtless.

And now I wish to talk filthy. On those same dog walks I find myself stepping carefully and watching where I let my dogs walk because each walk I pass by piles of dog feces that some unthinking or uncaring individual has left to sit on the grass or the sidewalk (as I write there is about a square foot of pavement on the Grady Street curve where a rather large dog left a gift that keeps on giving if you step in it). 

Sometimes, if I don’t see the walker carrying a bag, I offer one if I have extras. But honestly, if you can afford to own a dog you can afford to pick up dog bags. You can get four rolls of 15 each at a local dollar store in Landrum or elsewhere. As the ad says, “Just do it!” And if you don’t, expect to hear about it from me if I pass you on the street.

 

Beth A. Kinstler

Tryon