Moving on from "Smoking in Jordan", here I would share my thoughts about breaking the law in terms of littering.

3. Littering in Jordan:

The pure definition of littering is: Make a place untidy with rubbish or a large number of objects left lying about.

Why is littering bad you may ask, well for 3 major reasons:

1. Littering creates great health risks
2. Littering damages the environment
3. It just looks disgusting (fact stated by me)

So, what's the situation of littering in Jordan? How much garbage does each household produce on average in a day?

I am not here to lecture you about the environment (although for the people who know me, they know I would love to lol), I am here to state some disturbing facts about Jordanian behavior when it comes to garbage and littering.

You may all think that the amount of garbage produced from construction outweigh the amount of garbage produced in a household in Jordan, well guess again! Almost 66% of Jordan’s overall waste is produced at the household; (I'm talking about solid waste here), and a large amount of our taxes go to picking it up, transporting it and processing it.

Taking that fact into account, I ask you this question:

Why should I have to tolerate paying taxes on picking up garbage from the street, because Jordanian citizens litter? Why do I need to tolerate a bad health care system, bad public education and badly paved roads; because the government uses a high percentage of my taxes on picking it up and almost 80% of the Jordanian population litter streets with no care?

Again, not an environmental issue I'm talking about here (that will make you yawn while reading) but a sad behavioral fact!

Fact is, more than half of the Jordanian population litter the streets with no care.

MY REACTION IS: WHY?

• Do smokers throw their empty cigarette pack from the window of their car?
• Do smokers throw their cigarette buds in the street and on trees when they are done? (environmental fact: a cigarette can take up to 12 years to decompose)
• Do people throw used tissue paper in the street?
• Throw any unused item in an empty/unused land? (quick question: do they think they just created their own dump site?)
• And finally: throw empty plastic bags in the street when not needed?

When I ask my friends about why they litter, I get very weird and unrealistic answers like:

• My best friend actually said this to me: “Lara, if I don’t litter, the government wont spend money on employees to work and pick up the garbage. So this means I’m doing these people a favor by keeping their job valid.”

My response: REALLY? The government spending money on employees to pick your garbage is better than having the government spend it on the health care system? Or education? NOW that makes perfect sense to me! How can people justify their wrong behavior by such an excuse? Its beyond me really!

• “I really don’t know, I didn’t think about it before.”

My response: Start thinking about it! Your littering the street and causing environmental damage. Start caring!

• “Everyone does it, why should I be the one to stop?” or “no one cares, why should I care?”

My response: if you adopt and teach others around you to adopt this change in behavior, everyone will eventually change. Slowly but surely.

• “Do you want me to keep the garbage in my car? of course not!”

My response: Don’t keep it in the car for the whole day, when you get home throw the garbage in the bin. Is this too hard? Or are people so lazy? Or selfish?

Ending this article, I ask you to think about what I said and try to stop yourself from littering. If anyone has more answers that justify their wrong behaviors, please share it below and have the readers decide.