Job Discussion Forums

[johnslat]

Dear MEB,
You certainly know what you're taking about when you regale us with horror stories of your past employers in Saudi. So, I have no problem with that.

However, you have NO idea of what you're talking about here:

"I've been on planet earth for awhile, and in all those years the US NEVER looked like the Dingdong of Saudi Arabia.

Very poor comparison.

Let's not cut them some slack. Sans common sense they will never amend their trash-tossing ways."

I'll be glad to apologize if you'll tell me that you're in your early to mid 60s because THEN you could have the required knowledge.

Of course, the US has never looked like Saudi as regards littering in YOUR lifetime, but guess what - there actually WAS a time before you were born.

John

[veiledsentiments]

This is one of those cultural issues that must be cured from top down. In Western societies the concept of public health and cleaning of public areas came from the governments (via the health departments). It has been a long time since we in the West were quite as blatant about trashing our surroundings. I am close in age to JohnSlat and I don't remember Americans ever littering as badly.

This will only change when the government cleans everything up, fines those who litter, and starts pushing it in school. In fact, a good idea is to make those little princes and princesses go out there and pick up the garbage in their neighborhoods.

I don't really fault the citizens for the mindset. It is not something that changes overnight. Interestingly Oman has had the reputation of being unusually clean and neat for hundreds of years... all is relative, of course. It may partially be the difference between the nomadic versus the settled. (?) In Oman, if I caught a student littering, it usually only took a look from me and they would sheepishly go and pick it up. I don't think that you would get that response from the average citizen of Saudi or Kuwait... or Egypt...

VS

[johnslat]

"Thirty years ago, independent assessors rated nearly half of New York's streets and sidewalks as filthy. "A sweeper'd go out and there'd be mounds of steaming dog waste," Doherty said. "That was tolerated then."

Twenty years ago, New York was still so dirty that humorist Dave Barry accused the mayor of having appointed a Commissioner for Making Sure the Sidewalks Are Always Blocked by Steaming Fetid Mounds of Garbage the Size of Appalachian Foothills.

Today, the same independent assessment system used 30 years ago rates 95 percent of New York's streets and sidewalks as clean. Once-rare litter penalties now are the second biggest source of the city's revenue from fines, after parking violations.

As New York goes, so goes the nation, albeit by fits and starts, since litter curbs are almost entirely a local or state matter. For example:

In New Jersey, revenue from special $50 Shore to Please license plates subsidizes cleanups of river, bay and ocean shorelines by state prisoners.
In Washington state, a multimedia "Litter and it will hurt" campaign warns motorists of the state's serious litter fines: $1,025 for tossing a lighted cigarette, for example. The effort has cut litter by 20 percent on state-overseen highways and roads since it began in 2002, according to Megan Warfield, the state's coordinator of litter programs.
In Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma and Washington state, people who spot highway litterers can rat them out to hot lines by reporting their license plate numbers. The numbers, converted to vehicles' owners' addresses, generate tens of thousands of warning letters yearly. "That really gets their attention," Warfield said.
In Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas, litter-law prosecutions are up sharply, according to John Ockels, the director of the Texas Illegal Dumping Resource Center, a nonprofit organization in Sherman, Texas, that fights litter. "Nobody running for office in Texas ever wants to be soft on crime," Ockels explained, "and nowadays that includes environmental law enforcement."
In and around Augusta, Ga., junk cars get towed if they won't start. Littering citations against waste and recycling trucks are up 1,300 percent over last year, thanks largely to police traps on the road to the landfill. Neighborhood associations demanded the added enforcement, said Marshal's Office Sgt. David Bass, the head of the anti-litter unit.
Beyond enforcement, many factors aligned against litter. Recycling, for example, has made people more conscious of solid waste of all kinds. Tourist destinations discovered that it paid to be litter free. The same schoolchildren who pulled cigarettes out of their parents' mouths got on them when they littered.

It isn't that U.S. attitudes toward litter changed, said P. Wesley Schultz, a social psychologist at California State University at San Marcos. "People never had a very favorable attitude toward litter," Schultz said. "What we HAVE seen is a fairly dramatic change in people's norms about how appropriate it is to litter.

"People now feel littering is inappropriate and that others will disapprove of them if they litter. The norm about what's right and wrong changed."

The result is a dramatic shift in the nature of the U.S. litter problem, according to Steven Stein of Gaithersburg, Md., a professional litter and marine debris surveyor and analyst.

Litter that's intentional � tossing an empty Gatorade bottle, for example � used to be the bulk of the problem. Today, however, it's mainly unintentional or negligent, according to Stein: the bag of trash that flies out of a pickup's bed when it hits a bump or the tread that peels off an overinflated tire.

Stein, 54, should know. He's the director of operations at MSW Consultants of New Market, Md., a trash-surveying company. For eight years, he's strolled randomly selected but representative stretches of U.S. roadsides counting and classifying litter for local or state authorities."


http://www.mcclatchydc.com/244/story/25267.html

Regards,
John

[Cleopatra]

The way I see it, litter is such a problem (at least from our pov) in this part of the world is because:

1) The servant mentality (someone else is always there to clean up after you).

2) The lack of concern for the public realm.

3) The nomadic desert culture: Why take the trouble to keep the place clean, when you're soon going to move on, and the desert is so vast anyway?

4) The relative novelty of consumer goods. Barely 2 generations ago, most people didn't have to worry too much about where they were dumping their stuff, because they didn't have any stuff to dump.

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

Could someone...ANYONE... PLEASE provide some Sura pertaining to how "Man" is the custodian of the Earth and all living things that Allah created?

I KNOW it's out there...

007? Anybody knowledgeable?!?

That'll put an end to all of the apologists!

NCTBA

[The Lathe of Heaven]

Hello everyone,

I find myself separating all the recyclables into neat piles of plastic, metal, paper and glass and then throwing it all in the same waste basket. I guess I'm conditioned well after 20 years of recycling inoculation. I even look for the organic bin now so as to reduce my waste even more. I find also that a charge of 5 cents for plastic bags at retail outlets and supermarkets have cut out the unnecessary use of them. Here at Panda they seem to put every item you buy into a separate plastic bag. It took me some time to get this conditioning but it is well worth it. It must however be initiated from the top down as this is how I got conditioned through advertisement, TV, newspapers and radio.

TLOH

[johnslat]

And, if I may quote from my quote:

"People now feel littering is inappropriate and that others will disapprove of them if they litter. The norm about what's right and wrong changed."

Will that fit into a "shame culture" or will it not?

Regards,
John

[johnslat]

Dear NCTBA,
Your wish is my command:

"When we contemplate the verse in Surah Ar-Rum (30:41), we find that humankind has been forewarned to desist from polluting and destroying the earth and to turn back from evil actions. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is the perfect expression of ethical behaviour since his life depicts the Qur'anic message. In terms of environmental care, simple living, moderation, and respect and concern for all creation, his life abounds with examples of the Islamic environmental philosophy.

An oft-cited example from the Hadith, narrated by Abu Hurairah in Sahih Bukhari, illustrates the virtue of being kind to animals. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said, "A man saw a dog eating mud from (the severity of) thirst. So, that man took a shoe (and filled it) with water and kept on pouring the water for the dog till it quenched its thirst. So Allah approved of his deed and made him enter Paradise." In the day-to-day lifestyle of the Prophet (peace be upon him), exists a sublime example of moderation and simplicity.

In the last two centuries, the exploitation of the earth's resources reached new heights (or lows). Too often one reads about the depletion of earth's forests, the extinction of plants and animals and the threat of global climate change. Evidence of corruption or fasad, mischief and destruction is widespread. The balance of the natural system has been disturbed. The unquenchable thirst for power and wealth, which underlies much environmental exploitation, is destroying this planet."

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6490684756&topic=5221

"The loss of harmony between man and his environment is but an aspect of the loss of harmony between man and his Creator. Those who turn their backs on their Creator and forget Him can no longer feel at home in creation. "God's Viceregent on earth", as the Quran describes the man who truly fulfils his human function, is then no longer the custodian of nature and has become a stranger in the world, a stranger who cannot recognise the landmarks or conform to the customs of this place."

http://thebook.org/tbf-articles/article_85.shtml

Regards,
John

[007]

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

Thanks to both gentlemen. My point was this: The blatant trashing of the environment in this little part of the world is ungodly and against all which is taught here.

I've often cautioned against the rage about the driving habits over here (I sometimes do it myself) by pointing out that jes' a generation or so ago, many of these folks didn't have cars...mainly because they didn't have roads.

However, the spiritual outlook has always informed us that we are the custodians of the good Earth that God has given us. The fact that folk in this part of the world have been suddenly dragged into modernization as an excuse is a red-herring.

They have ALWAYS been taught to respect and appreciate what God has given them.

Don't apologize for litterers...face them as I do on a daily basis and challenge them to change.

And, let's not even get me started on kids (or "projectiles" as we used to refer to them in saudi) not being securely strapped into automobiles...

NCTBA

P.s.- I am NOT a "tree-hugger" and and DEFINITELY anti-P.C.

[Cleopatra]

[Never Ceased To Be Amazed]

All in a day's work, my dear...all in a day's...sigh...work...

NCTBA

[trapezius]

[trapezius]

Continuing my list from page 2:

19) Some of the worst smelling and wettest public toilets anywhere, and most don't have soap. Even a lot of mall bathrooms are lacking soap. It is bafflingly disgusting.