I noticed renewed complaints about poor people who rifle through our rubbish bins in search of anything of value.
The phenomenon may be on the increase, due to the Covid-affected economy hitting the poor hardest.
People are annoyed at the fact that waste diggers cause a big mess when they search through our wheelie bins and then don’t bother cleaning up after themselves.
Many say theirs is a legitimate frustration considering that they pay for the municipal service.
Some also complain that the bin scratchers become abusive when confronted and asked to clean up their mess.
Others complain that they are targeted after they check them for causing a mess.
It’s become so bad now that some people have actually come up with what they say are deterrents, like smearing dog poo all over their refuse.
So I thought it’s time that I looked at the other side of this argument.
Because there was a time when I also used to get my back up about people going through my trash, until I started asking myself different questions.
Like, is my once-a-week annoyance more valid than the hunger of a fellow human being?
I started appreciating the humiliation of my rubbish being considered more worthwhile than their own dignity.
I looked at it through the lens of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory, which basically explains what motivates people; starting with our basic needs – our survival instincts.
These people who annoy us by upsetting one of our routines of privilege, scavenge because they are hungry.
When driven by the basic need of hunger, cleaning up after ourselves is not a priority.
Just think about when you quickly make a sandwich, because you are “starving”.
Most people first eat the sandwich, before cleaning up the bread crumbs and wiping the counter.
There's also a nuanced argument about the anger they DON'T know they feel towards us – who have so much more than they do.
So it would be fair to say that they are feeling what the kids today call “hangry”.
Could I suggest a bit of compassion and empathy?
Would you not do the same if your family needed to eat and you had no money and didn’t want to resort to criminality?
So can we consider separating our rubbish, so they become used to seeing a packet with food or other valuables inside or next to the bin?
In this way they wouldn’t have to humiliate themselves further by scratching deep down into the wheelie bin.
But it will take patience, because that "training" will take time.
Until then, the (unpalatable) short-term solution is simply to pick up the mess they leave behind.
That is also considered an act of compassion.
It will give you an idea of what they have to deal with just to eat!