Most of us are confronted by the dire conditions in public restrooms on a regular basis. The sad truth is that our society doesn’t seem to care or understand the importance of public cleanliness. While many towns hire or pay for street cleaners or sweepers, they always forget that there is more than street sweeping like hiring window cleaners, public toilet cleaners and they forget to hire regular drain cleaners. Not putting things lightly, public cleanliness can be the difference between life or death.
The problem, unfortunately, lies with our children. Habits pertaining to cleanliness such as washing hands, flushing the toilet or throwing out trash should all be taught from a very young age. Most parents ignore the welfare of their children, and in turn, when these youngsters grow up, they will continue to hand down these nasty habits to their children.
Why should anyone care about public cleanliness? For one, we need to understand that disease and sickness can spread like wildfire in cities where public health is not a big concern. Littering, spitting, urinating in public or even smoking puts one more nail into the proverbial coffin. Alone, none of these things will cause an outbreak, but when you combine thousands of these acts on a daily basis, sickness and disease are just around the corner.
It is much easier to get sick or develop allergies when your environment is filthy and unclean. Just touching an infected candy wrapper on the floor or a doorknob that was touched with unclean hands can spread germs and bacteria. Even without meaning to, you could be spreading germs around.
We also need to understand the impact that unclean cities can have on our environment. Dumping trash and chemicals into the local water supply, can contaminate drinking water and lead to illnesses— even death. Nature can also suffer and animals can die when we’re careless about public cleanliness. Even if this generation will never see the full-on devastation of our uncaring society, the risk is great when it comes to our future.
Where should cleanliness start? It’s not just public places that determine the state of our environment, but our homes as well. People that don’t care about their personal hygiene are the same individuals that will litter, smoke, and spread disease.
In this day and age, there’s really no excuse for not raising public awareness of this environmental issue. With the help of social media, instructional videos, and the public school system, we could be educating children and adults alike about the risks we take when we ignore public cleanliness.
