Several months ago, I wrote about a reader who wondered
what her responsibility was when she and her partner were out for a walk when
they came upon a woman walking her dog. The dog owner asked the couple if they
happened to have any plastic bags on them, presumably to help her clean up
after her dog. The reader told the woman they didn't have any bags, but that
there were some city-provided waste bags about 100 yards away.
When the couple made a loop around their neighborhood and
came upon the same spot where they encountered the dog owner, they noted she
was gone but the waste was not. I had argued that it was not the couple's
responsibility to clean up after the dog and the right thing was for the dog
owner to have carried her own plastic bags or made the effort to get one the
couple pointed out to her.
R.N. of Chillicothe, Ohio, believes the couple should
have done more. When they "circled back and saw the owner's dog
deposit," he writes, "they should have gotten a plastic bag and
picked up the mess."
The incident reminded R.N. of a bicycle ride he made with
a cycling group in a nearby state park. At the top of a hill, at a dead end in
the road, R.N. writes that there were remnants of a fire with associated trash,
empty beer cans, cigarette pack, cigarette butts, and an empty deodorant stick.
"Several people lamented the trash," he writes
"but no one picked it up or mentioned picking it up even though several
riders had large saddle bags."
R.N. did not think he had room in his jersey pocket and
he said nothing to the other riders. "I should have picked up something
and said something," he writes, citing a saying from his backpacking days
that you should always come out of the woods with more than you brought in.
"It is the right thing to do."
R.N.'s point is well taken. I'm sure I'm not the only
person to spend time picking up litter (empty bottles, paper bags, assorted
items tossed from car windows) from the street in my neighborhood and tossing
it into a waste can on my walk to work. Indeed, on other bicycle rides, R.N.
has taken the time to slow down his ride and remove trash from the road.
It is the right thing to want to take pride in your
environment, but on a more practical note, when you live in the city like I do,
to remove anything that might attract unwanted vermin.
When it comes to a pet dog's waste, however, the
responsibility for tidying up is still the dog's owner responsibility. There
should be no expectation that neighbors will be or should be willing to pick it
up.
The right thing is for dog owners to be responsible and
clean up after their own pets. If they forget to bring a plastic bag with them
on their walks, then they should take the time to return to the scene to clean
up.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
(c) 2014 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
1 comment:
We need to keep our environment clean, no doubt about that. Responsible people do it, at home, in parks, in shopping centers, and along streets and highways.
But to say that we have a responsibility to clean up after irresponsible people is, well, irresponsible. It's giving a free pass to irresponsible people. I would like to see citations, with fines attached, to irresponsible people.
But those of us who are responsible will do it......we will clean up after the adult-sized children forget their mothers aren't right behind them, still cleaning up their messes.
We will clean up the environment after people who are out for a nature walk trash nature by their lack of responsibility.
The adults clean up the messes left by others.......environmental messes, life messes, lawless messes large and small.
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