Modern Life is Rubbish

Every night when I lock up the Library I notice the 'offerings' left on tables - sweet papers, empty crisp packets, plastic bottles, paper cups ... sometimes these are on full display, occasionally it feels as if they have been hidden, stuffed down the side of a PC or under a keyboard.

Collectively each week, 16-20 bags of paper cups, 10-15 bags of plastic bottles and tens of bags of unsorted rubbish are collected from our recycling bins. The reason we cannot open earlier or always at 8.30am is because of all this rubbish, the bits that are in bins and the bits left lying around.

How do the cleaners feel about cleaning up this excess mess? I wonder what makes someone leave a mess for another to clean up?

And the rubbish on the desks feels like the symptom of a larger culture. Many writers suggest that our world view has been dominated for centuries by mechanistic models of how to be (see Margaret Wheatley or Joanna Macy for instance). In this world-view we are all separate: leaving rubbish on the desk has no impact on me, I can shed it and be gone. I have no relationship to the space or to others who use it. These writers also talk of a new way of looking at ourselves in the world - as interconnected, part of a collective system. In this framework when I leave rubbish on the desk it means that I impact on the next person who uses the space, on the people waiting at the bottom of the stairs at 8.30am to use the upper floor of the Library, and on the sense of space. I see the space as a place to be cared for, I assume my responsibility for its maintenance.