Ban plastic water containers?

It's easy to complain about life, to be critical but do nothing to make a change. That's exactly what I was beginning to do several weeks ago. I climb Jacob's Ladder at least three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at 6am. Jacob's Ladder is an amazing place. At the top the views of the river and city are sensational and on a crisp, clear morning I love being part of the sun peeking over the Darling Scarp and bringing myself to life with the sound of birds and people doing good things for their health.

When I climb stairs I tend to look down. It's a smart thing to do. And that's when I began to notice the amount of litter under Jacob's Ladder. There were pieces of paper, glass bottles and plastic drink containers. Actually, make that lots, and lots, and lots of plastic drink containers. Under bushes and shrubs, under the stairs, in the grass. All over the place. And that's when I started to complain to myself.

Why isn't the council doing something about this? Someone should do something about this mess. Should, should, should. Then I got to thinking that, rather then simply wish for something different I could do something about it. I'll phone the council and ask them to get someone out there. But that could take ages so I thought why not just clean it up myself?

And that's exactly what I did. Over the next few visits to the ladder I took some big green garbage bags and cleaned the place up. Now, each time I climb the ladder I keep a look out for plastic drink bottles and collect them and throw them in the bin. It feels great to keep a little part of this beautiful place in the world looking clean and tidy.

Now the question is, how do we get rid of the water bottles in the first place? My challenge to anyone is to observe the litter on the side of a road or footpath. In most cases much of it will be plastic drink containers. If keeping our part of the world clean is not motivation enough how can we create an incentive for people to recycle/reuse/collect these containers. I'll bet if we had a clever solution there could be a great little business in people collecting drink containers to claim a reward. Outside of a small incentive for people to return them to a collection depot, as they do in South Australia, I'm not sure how else it could be done.