But in big cities, the typical scene of watching dumpsters hauled away by garbage men into a garbage truck is just as common as back home. One noticeable difference is that in bigger cities, littering is much more common than it is back home. Some of my neighbors see it as a norm rather than an issue. However, a few people have stepped up to break the mold and change the way we look at how we treat our "home," our community.
I started volunteering with a newly form organization called the Sampah Rangers, who organize street cleanups every week. What is very cool about Sampah Rangers is that they not only set up large community clean-ups but they are very good at establishing an internet prescence. Most people who volunteer have seen their instagram. Because of this group, more and more people are starting to rethink habits that have become so common that they can seem invisible.
The community has this need because there is a lot of trash and there isn't a huge push to inform people about the dangers of littering. In many places today, there are successful programs, such as bringing plastic to your local bus station to be recycled in exchange for a bus ticket, but the general sense of keeping the streets clutter-free still isn't far-reaching.
To put this in perspective, though, it wasn't that long ago when the U.S. was just as bad in terms of trash collection(if not worse in several states). It took a while before the typical American really started shaming litter bugs and saying no to litter. That's why I like community groups like Sampah Rangers. They are changing the way people see garbage by making it hard to ignore.
