I took a detour on the way home to sit in the park at Franklin Square and finish off a bag of peanuts. After I was done I looked down & saw the little pile of shell fragments on the ground.
Do you consider this to be littering? The shells are biodegradable, and I don’t see how this is very different from the assorted pine cones, acorns & crabapples that fall to the ground and decay.
I could understand if it was a half-eaten apple or hotdog that was going to rot & emit a foul stench, but peanut shells? IMHO, tossing one single cigarette butt to the ground is worse than a whole bag of peanut shells.
For those of you who say yes (I am littering) let me ask you this. In truth, half of the bag went to feed the squirrels (I know they are rodents, but they are cute rodents). The squirres did pretty much the same thing I did, except their shell fragments were scattered all over the sidewalk instead of all piled together. Are the squirres littering?
(Note to handy: Yes I know what the definition of littering is, so there is no need to c&p the definition from dictionary.com, thankyouverymuch.)
I have always been of the opinion that tossing biodegradable things (that break down in days, not weeks or months) to the ground was not littering so long as they blend in with the earthtones (i.e., no orange peels or pumpkin shells) and as long as they don’t get moldy & foul and generally disgusting to passersby. Also the amount makes a difference- my two or three dozen peanut shells might not be littering but if everybody who sat at that bench did the same thing the park might become a trashy place pretty quick.
Ha, I never thought of the colour coordination aspect! Don’t want to fuck up the feng shui.
I don’t think you’re littering. I do a fair amount of driving around & often eat while driving. I often will toss things like apple cores & half eaten donuts where I think there’s a good chance that they’ll be eaten by birds or squirrels.
I don’t think squirrels can litter, because they cannot form the intent to litter. Otherwise we’d clog the court system with urban wildlife charged with urinating in public, littering, lewd behaviour…
I don’t think you’re littering in this instance. Um…maybe the shells will be picked up by birds and used as nest-making material. That’s it—your doing a service for the local wildlife.Hardly littering!
There are some enviromentalists around who object to the apple-core littering, as apparently, it not being a native tree to (any given) country they don’t want the seed to start to grow at some obscure spot it does not need to be at, where it might cause problems of some kind.
However, not being an enviromentalist myself, and on top of that not being a botany buff of any kind, I may be talking uninformed crap.
Ooooh, you poor ignorant people…do you think you are actually helping those cute little animals by feeding them peanuts or (yuck) donuts??? OP, your mistake was not leaving a minor and quickly dispersed eyesore on the ground, but giving the local critters a bite to eat!
