There’s nothing worse than walking down a sidewalk and trudging into a pile of dog waste or a chewed piece of gum, and having either substance stuck in the treads of your shoe.
Both are going to mean you’re going to have to spend some time cleaning your shoes, and depending when you discover the substance, possibly retrace your steps and undo damage of tracking the substance into other locations.
In this day and age, though, it still happens, and it happens because people don’t take time to clean up after their animals or dispose of their gum or other sticky waste properly.
We get it. It’s a dirty job that rarely anyone wants to take care of. As a pet owner, though, cleaning up the pitches your pet makes is a responsibility of pet ownership.
In uptown Mount Vernon, we have citizens who take time out of their weekends to clean up the streets of downtown. We have clean-up days devoted to giving our community an extra sparkle before and after a festival.
And there are waste bins every few feet in uptown Mount Vernon and downtown Lisbon.
Volunteers willingly get their hands dirty with nasty stuff that is, frankly, someone else’s responsibility.
But it’s also something we can all do our part to correct. If you see something that shouldn’t be on our streets or sidewalks and can safely remove it, do so. If you’re outside, take the time to make sure the waste of yourself and others gets to the appropriate receptacles.
Help keep our community streets and sidewalks clean. After all, they’re streets and sidewalks we all use.