Seeing a photo of the piles of rubbish left behind by exuberant but thoughtless or apathetic people who were out on the streets of my hometown left me wondering: Did the Koreans who welcomed the first sunrise of 2011 leave their paper cups of coffee, plastic bottles or party hats all over the beach or did most do the responsible thing and dispose of their rubbish properly?
I'd like to think that if you're going to celebrate the new year by communing with nature, you're more likely to take care of the environment and not leave your mess to be cleaned up by foreign labourers. But then that may be naive of me. If only we took more seriously more concrete yardsticks to measure how advanced a society is - instead of looking at the GDP, how about seeing how much or little waste is left behind by party-goers?
If any of you were there on the beaches and hilltops in Korea before dawn, could you share with me what you saw on the ground when it was lit up by the first rays of the sun?
sources:
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/01/01/2011010100325.html
http://kl-nite.blogspot.com/2010/01/2010-new-year-celebration-area-kl.html
