Litter one; Litter all, UI is Home!

 

Image Credit: Istock

By Halimat Mausi Sunmonu

I know of a kingdom in the former and recent days where humans with various attributes can be likened to lower animals like Lion, Tiger and other waid anemas. Funnily, dogs and cats are nominal members of this kingdom, you could only just find a few of them because they rarely littered or left out their wastes for the world to see. This is because the people in the kingdom are too “serious-minded” to bother about where their less packages and non-valuables end up. Their first and last instinct of where to put their waste is probably along the road. Many times, the thing that matters the most is not how to dispose of waste, it just doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Life don hard pass that one. Of course the king would care less about waste disposal, because leadership is too tasking to think about the dirty environment. It is beautiful to see a dirty place as long as everyone looks dazzling, the surroundings can be overlooked. Now, let's apply this logic to our daily lives. Walk with me.

In certain halls of residence, you find wrappers in rest rooms but we're too pretty to be found taking out trash from the rest room; it is undemure. I mean, why dispose properly when you can just stroll out like the king and queen that you are? What then are the cleaners left to do if you pick up the trash or even refuse to litter? I'm sure UI has more pressing needs to finance than paying cleaners who are not working and no! It is you I blame! I blame you for doing oversabi, for picking up trash every now and then. Religious areas that are supposed to be sacred are not even left out because people still leave what is left of their goodies on the floor. This is reasonably so because there are better things to think of. Prayers, books, love, career, name it! A thousand things.

Specifically, to go far in life, it is good and necessary to lower weights, especially the unnecessary ones. These include the friendship that is not paying you, the relationship that makes you cry at night and the subject matter of this discourse, the biscuit and sachet water wrap you just finished downing. Tolu is an environment-enthusiast who believes in making the right use of the environment, so she abstains from littering. As a result Tolu stuffs her designer bags with papers, biscuit and candy wraps just because she respects the environment. First of all, ask Tolu what holding on to biscuit and candy wraps has done for her, absolutely nothing! Second, who is Tolu to define what using the environment “right” means? We all have free will and the ability to forge our destinies, how much more the environment? Most importantly, has Tolu gotten any award for not littering? Yes, you're right! Nothing to show for it.

Now, you would agree that there's no point holding on to that plastic bottle; throw it on the ground and as fast as you can too. You might not want to throw them on the ground because someone might be looking or you don't want to be called uncivil, uncultured and whatnot but what does it matter? God has made the environment ours as human and it is only a token of appreciation to the creator to make use of the space he has given us. Hey! Look here, UI is home, a place where we exist as students. If it can take our brains, time, and money, what's the problem with it taking our waste too? Besides, UI has its flaws, I don't know about you, but after going through the mental and physical challenges that come with studying here, if its grounds still can't take responsibility for our wastes, then we can't truly call it home. 

Dearest Uite, to call UI home is to litter its grounds, to call UI home is to embellish its building with plastic bottles, to call UI home is to rebrand it a dumbing site. Litter one; litter all, UI is our home!