Obviously when it comes to the wilderness (or even our backyard, neighborhood streets, or local parks) - we don't love trash. Trash is not only distasteful to our eyes, but can actually alter or destroy the ecosystem. We teach Leave no Trace principles on our trips to help reduce our impact on the areas we travel. One of those principles being - you pack it in/you pack it out. And I am not just talking about obvious items like an empty plastic water bottle, or your soda cup from Subway. It is also the small things that alter our natural world - an orange peel, a handful of dropped trail mix, toilet paper, etc.
Yes, even those things that "biodegrade" need to be packed out. The hardest one to understand, I think, is the apple core. There are good arguments for throwing it off in the woods: It's natural to most environments, it biodegrades relatively quickly, and if an animal ate it, it would not get terribly sick and it may find apples to eat in the area anyway. However, I have a different way of thinking about this: you may be just one of hundreds that visit that trail/park/campsite and if all hundred of you left your apple core, well, that would vastly alter not only how the area looked, but also the animals that may forage there. A few peanuts from your GORP may not seem a big deal, but when that chipmunk or squirrel starts relying on the hundreds of people that thought "no big deal" to leave a few peanuts, we have altered the system. Plus, those all too-friendly chipmunks, etc, are a real nuisance when you are trying to enjoy a picnic, or camp at a nice site.
The other idea I like to promote is collecting trash when possible. It is great when we collect the big, very messy things. But again, thing about the small items. I try to make a point of picking up 3 pieces of trash on my hiking trail. Typically they are small wrappers that probably fell out of someone's pocket or the twist-tie from lunch. I make the tiny extra effort to bend down and pick them up and carry them out with me. If we go back to the idea of hundreds of people visiting a trail - if each one of those people picked up 3 pieces of trash - we'd have a lot less trash in the wilderness.
We have to remember we aren't the only ones out there. Let's collect the trash like Oscar the Grouch and keep it in our garbage cans. -- Deb
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