52 Weeks of Neighboring - Week 19

Neighboring Tip of the Week - Go for a walk around your neighborhood and collect trash.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!

Last month, we presented a neighboring tip on going for a walk around your neighborhood. Now, this week, we are expanding upon that tip and encourage you to pick up trash while doing so! Sadly, trash still accumulates in our neighborhoods, even in the midst of a pandemic….

This particular tip comes to us from Neighboring Movement co-founder Matt Johnson, but he borrowed the tip from his mom, Glenna, so we give her the credit. Glenna began taking walks around her neighborhood a few years ago, and upon doing so, she started to take bags with her in order to pick up trash. Her theory is that people are more inclined to litter if they see litter and less inclined to litter if they don’t see litter. The loop Glenna walks is one mile, and she takes two grocery bags with her in which to place the picked-up trash. At the beginning of her experiment, she would often reach the half-mile mark and already have filled both of her grocery bags. A sad tale, you say? Take heart! Over time, the amount of trash present in the neighborhood has decreased drastically. Now, Glenna frequently reaches the half-mile mark without seeing a single piece of trash, proving her own theory!

We believe that one element of being a good neighbor is recognizing that we can shape our neighborhood. In Glenna’s case, this meant picking up trash, but there are so many other ways this can happen, too. Sometimes people don't reciprocate our efforts, but we have often discovered that, eventually, people start to join in and help because, as we often say, neighboring begets neighboring!

For Glenna, this tip not only meant walking in her neighborhood and picking up trash but also engaging in conversation with her neighbors. Her countless walks led to neighbors recognizing her, and neighbors recognizing her led to neighbors having conversations with her! This brings us to our final point: this tip is really about being present in our neighborhoods. Beautifying them is just an awesome, secondary benefit!

Like all of the tips we have been encouraging recently, this is an awesome tip to experiment with in the midst of this pandemic. It gives you the opportunity to engage in conversation with neighbors who are also out, makes you visible to your neighbors, helps you remain informed about the happenings of your neighborhood, allows you to notice assets in your neighborhood you haven’t noticed before, grants you the perfect opportunity to get out of the house and enjoy the fresh air, and keeps trash from distracting others from the beauty of your neighborhood!

As one last note, we would also encourage you to wear a mask, or have a mask handy, when experimenting with this tip. Like we mentioned in last week’s tip, we now know that masks are very effective in helping us prevent transmission of coronavirus, so we suggest wearing them in any situation where you may interact with other people, and walking around your neighborhood is one of those situations.

Keep up the good neighboring work in the midst of this pandemic! You’ve got this!

Happy neighboring!