An endless trail of rubbish around the city's streets

A common sight outside a local opportunity
 store and although that is distressing enough,
what is of real concern is the seemingly endless
 trail of rubbish left around the city's streets.

Radio National accompanies me on early morning walks around the environs of Shepparton.

At that time of the day, the ABC station transmits primarily news and information and the stories it tells can be uplifting, damn depressing, or simply interesting.

What is on the radio at that time matches pretty well the tenor of what I see and experience when walking around the inner-city and surrounding neighbourhoods.

Occasionally a motorist will stop at an intersection and wave me across while they wait, or a passing fellow walker will offer a cheerful “good morning” as they go by.

Those small, and seeming inconsequential moments, reaffirm your faith in humanity, but then just as quick as your spirit soars, it can come crashing down.

Rubbish is probably the most significant marker of human presence.

Blatant dumping of household rubbish and sometimes industrial waste is reported by this newspaper and other forms of media, but what rarely rates a mention is the likes of the trail of litter throughout the city’s streets and shared pathways.

That rubbish is incidental – a bottle here, a can there, a shoe, a cardboard box, junk mail blowing down the street, scraps falling our passing utes and trucks, clothing, plastic bags (they too are rubbish, but handy for carrying all the other detritus), used nappies, and on one occasion of used woman’s health product, which I had swooped on before realizing what it was.

Probably the most frustrating is the packaging from around something bought at a nearby store. That packaging is often torn open and simply thrown on the ground, often ignoring a nearby rubbish bin.

While that might be frustrating, it is the behaviour of those who seek a secluded spot for a quiet drink that is the most intriguing – many of course throw their cans and bottles carelessly away, but some go to great lengths to hide their empties or pack them neatly back in the box or bag in which they carried them.

Why, I wonder if they care so much to pack their empties back in the box or bag, or make an effort at hiding them and not take it to a rubbish bin?

And what does the sometimes apocalyptic-like news have to do with the litany of rubbish that fouls our city’s streets?

Well, that discarded piece of seemingly harmless rubbish is sort of “ground zero” in caring for your home, caring for your community, caring for your environment and caring for your fellows.

Walking the streets of Shepparton cleaning up after others, the thoughts of reporter John Vidal often crowd my thinking – he recently wrote: “We weep at the disappearance of endangered species but avert our eyes to the causes of Earth’s destruction”.

That said, and this being early 2017, let’s personally enact a New Year’s resolution; first, not to litter and second, pick up and properly dispose of any rubbish we see; making our hometown just a little cleaner and somewhat tidier.

Walking about your city can make you 'happy, hopeful and healthy'

Walking is a favoured method of getting about the city.

Cycling is next and when time or distance precludes those options, driving is the next choice.

Tony Taylor's,
"Fishing the
River of Life".

Public transport, buses, need to be in the mix, but sadly it seems to be too infrequent and always appears to be not where I am or going where it is I want to go.

Research illustrates that for public transport to be truly effective, read useful; it needs to be effectively going “past your door” every seven minutes.

Our future will be decidedly different from what we know today and those three transport methods – walking, cycling and public transport – will become elementary.

They are, it has been said, society’s “silver bullet” as walking and cycling are both inevitably about exercise rescuing us from host of health difficulties and public transport, just like walking and cycling, will be our fundamental method of movement as the world really begins to scrabble for energy.

After 200 000 years of evolution, walking is still fundamental to our lives and our reactions have evolved in accord with that pace to ensure that a collision between walkers is a rare as snow in the Goulburn Valley.

Beyond ensuring that we can walk collision free, evolution has shaped our mental capabilities to coherently absorb what is happening around us we walk, or even at a steady cycling pace.

Driving determines that your attention be on the task at hand, or it should, and so the intricate and intimate realities of your community become a blur as you speed by; at least speed in terms of your cognitive ability to take note of what is in your field of vision, as limited as it is.

So, if you care about your community walk, explore the streets to which you have never been, look at the buildings, check out the signs, be curious, wonder why certain things are or are not happening, pick up some rubbish, encounter a stranger and talk with them, spend a few minutes talking with a friend and embed yourself in your community.

Coincidently as these thoughts were taking shape a friend lent me a book written by a 80-year-old allegedly about fishing, which it obliquely was, but in reality it was mediation about life and in which the author, Tony Taylor, thought about the five things he could pass onto his eight-year-old grandson; things that a person could do every day to make to make them healthy, hopeful and happy.

Taylor said people should develop friendships; be physically active; foster curiosity about the world; continue education throughout their life and finally, do not think about money all the time, rather offer help and services to all.

“These five things”, he wrote, “maintain good mental health”.