Litter-Free Propaganda

Growing up in the States I was exposed at a young age to clever trash-free slogans like "leave nature cleaner than you found it." And man did this propaganda ever work. When I came to Cairo in 2007 I found myself paralyzed by the trash disposal system there, which is that you throw your garbage into the street. Unable to throw my food scraps or plastic bags, I would carry my trash in my hands for HOURS, just out of habit, thinking that maybe a garbage can would appear like some shimmering mirage in the desert. Inevitably some well-meaning merchant would take the trash off my hands, only to chuck it into the traffic-clogged street. I never got used to it.

That was before the swine flu panic. Continuing its long tradition of genius policymaking, the Egyptian government prepared for the worst. Only two people have died from H1N1, but one province has actually picked out locations for mass human graves in case the pandemic reaches Pharaonic plague proportions. The national government has tried to stem the oncoming calamity by slaughtering all 300,000 of the country's pigs.

Of course, the pigs were crucial for the garbage pickers, a small community of Christians who collect trash from off the streets (I think I paid around 90 cents a month for their daily doorstep services). Now that they are dead, they have no way of disposing with food waste, so they have stopped collecting it, and only pick up inorganic waste.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/world/africa/20cairo.html

Now nobody has ever visited Cairo and come away awestruck at its cleanliness, but there might soon be some new Pyramids. The goats just aren't cuttin' the mustard.

Dubai, to my knowledge, doesn't have pigs to eat its food trash. It does, however, have effective anti-litter propaganda.

Take, for example, this amazing sticker which I found on my window when I moved in:

It's non-removeable, as if I would ever want to peel off such a masterpiece of contemporary art. At first I thought the intended message was:

VEILED LADIES, DO NOT THROW YOUR PURSES AT THE CREEPY LOOKING MAN BELOW WHO LOOKS LIKE HE IS TRYING TO STEAL SOMETHING.

However, if you look closely you can see the writing on the window: DO NOT LITTER.

Now I will admit, in spite of the puritanical litter-free-ness so deeply engrained in me, I do occasionally get a hankerin' to get wild and crazy and chuck my trash out my 28th floor window just to watch it fall. My inner mischief maker is dying to gleefully launch banana peels into the swimming pool or nail some unsuspecting sunbather with my empty milk cartons. Fortunately this sign is there to dissuade me, and dissuade me it does, a modern day eleventh commandment etched on my window and my heart.

Well played, Dubai. Well played.