If every person picked up a piece of litter a day, the world would be exceptionally cleaner quite quickly.

I make a point to pick up any I see; you can carry dog waste bags if you're scared to touch things.

Powdering7082 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This excerpt is well worth reading IMO

Back when I first started doing these clean-up projects, I started by just picking up litter that was in my own neighborhood. (Because that was where I lived, and because I had never been to a lot of the other neighborhoods in my area.) But I found that the more that I did this kind of work, the more that I wanted to do it, and I eventually found myself going beyond my own neighborhood and into neighborhoods that I had never been to before. (Including the ones that I had always heard were "bad neighborhoods".)

Then to make things more interesting, I started using the city bus system for the first time, and I started making it a point to go someplace new that I had never been to before whenever I picked up litter. And after going through a big stack of monthly bus passes, and walking down just about every street in the city (and doing it alone and without a phone) I want to say that not only has nothing bad ever happened to me, but I've encountered a lot of strangers who were almost "too nice" to me...

Because these clean-up projects involve a lot of walking and lugging around heavy stuff, it seems that no matter where I go, strangers will keep pulling over to offer me a ride. And because I do these projects even during extreme weather, the more intense the weather gets, the nicer people will become. (During the summer on really hot days, strangers will keep pulling over just to ask if I'm going to be OK working outside in the heat and if they can go and buy some cold water for me, and sometimes people will even try to give me an umbrella or an extra coat on days when it's raining or snowing.)

And there were times when I would pick up a penny that was in the middle of road or stuck in a crack in the sidewalk, and I guess that it would give strangers walking by the impression that I must need money, and sometimes people would actually pull out their wallet and start trying to give me money!

Strangers will also come up and thank me for what I'm doing, and sometimes they will end up talking to me for a long time, and I've ended up meeting a lot of friendly people this way.

I have been shown such a good side of people, that it simply wouldn't make sense for me to go back to being fearful of strangers and automatically imagining the worst-case scenarios about them. (Like I tended to do back when I didn't get out much and my view of the outside world was being shaped by watching the News.)

I don't doubt that there is crime in my area. (After all, "littering" itself is a crime, and there are MILLIONS of examples of this crime in plain sight where I live.)

But because I have been doing these clean-up projects, I've spent more time outside and less time looking at a screen in the past few years than I have at any other time in my life. And I know that what I am about to say will probably sound crazy to anyone who did the exact opposite of that and who spent the past few years locked in their homes and being bombarded all day long by the media with stories about crime, riots, racism, sickness, and war, but I honestly have never felt safer going outside than I do today.

I started picking up litter in my neighborhood because I wanted to help make the world a better place, and because it got me to get out more and start to base my view of the outside world on my actual experience in the outside world, the world is a much better place to me now, and that is the priceless treasure that I found while picking up a zillion pieces of litter.

	▲	stevekemp 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> started using the city bus system for the first time, and I started making it a point to go someplace new That's a fun thing to do when you move cities, or countries. I spent several weekends riding every single tram line in Helsinki with my son. We'd pick a number we'd not yet done and ride each both ways to the terminus. Get out at the end of the line and see what was nearby, have a cake, then come back home. We had a map from the local transport company and we'd put stickers on the lines we'd done, and the last stops. A good way to see different neighbourhoods in the same city.

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mulmen 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What’s the safe way to handle heroin needles?

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Intermernet 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Have a sharps disposal container, wear gloves, avoid the pointy bit, sanitise regularly.

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SoftTalker 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Seem to me if you're picking up litter possibly including needles/syringes you don't want the sort of complicated sharps containers you see at a medical clinic, where you have to operate some sort of trap door mechanism.

You want something simple, like a bucket, maybe with a funnel type opening, so that you can pick up the syringe with a grab tool and just drop it into the container with a minimum of handling or manuvering required.

Doctors and nurses who are practiced at handling sharps still stick themselves occasionally. You really don't want to touch them with your hands, even with gloved hands.

	▲	jrmg 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Our local municipal waste authority recommends using laundry detergent liquid bottles as sharps containers. Seems the FDA agrees they’re suitable: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/safely-using-sharps-need...
	▲	true_religion 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You mean something like this? https://store.stericycle.com/8-2-quart-bd-sharps-container/3... They’re pretty common in nursing homes in my area.