You all remember this photo from my mud mania post, right?
They were digging for discarded shoes and clothes after all of the muddy fun.
I couldn't believe it.
Watching person after person strip their kids down, and then just toss their muddy shoes (and clothes) into a trash can. It was nuts!
Seriously, people?!
It's just MUD.
It WASHES off.
I thought for sure I was mistaken. I had assumed all of the cans around were trash bins, but surely they had to be recycling bins of some sort. People who didn't want to go through the hassle of rinsing off their muddy shoes and clothes could just put them in one of the bins set up around the park, and then they would be picked up, hosed down, and distributed to local shelters or something. Right... that had to be it!
NOPE! We asked the event staff. They were, indeed, trash cans. Everything in them would be (as they are every year) taken to the dump.
Whaaaaaaa?!?!
There were atleast several HUNDRED pairs of freakin' shoes thrown in them!!!
Un-fucking-Believable!
There were a few larger families there that brought boxes specifically for discarded shoes. I spoke to one family with 6 kids who were on their way out of there with 3 or 4 new pairs for each kid! Score.
We got some trash bags from the staff so we could rummage through the trash cans ourselves, plucking out all of the shoes and clothes to bring home, clean up, and donate to a shelter. We're not talking cans full of ripped up ol sneakers that were on their last leg anyway; there were only a handful of those. Most of the shoes were pretty brand spankin' new! Insane!
We wont be here next year, but I'm going to see what I can do to get some kind of donation/volunteer system set up for subsequent mud mania events. It just makes sense... if there are THAT many people who don't want to deal with rinsing off muddy shoes and clothes, and would rather just throw them away ... why not have a station set up to accept the items; with volunteers doing the cleaning and distributing. C'mon, people!
The absolute wasteful nature of Americans is appalling, truly. I'm still shaking my head in disbelief.
Exhibits A / B / C / D / E and F...
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