A Message in the Trash

Thought I'd repost a message from a few months ago because I was picking up trash again today (3/14/14) on the Mill St. Bridge (Natick). Sadly very little change to report. The litter has a strong message: loss, sadness, miseducation, escape, self-medication, disconnection (caffeine, alcohol, sugar, lottery tickets, fast food, single use containers). Might be time to pay closer attention. There's a message here. 
Dear Friends,
Saturday I was in the midst of digging out and emptying one of the BHLF Trash / Recycle Buddy Bins along Windsor Ave (Natick HS - Dug Pond area). A letter carrier, Sandra Symonds, stopped briefly with her truck, wrote me (Big Heart Little Feet) a check for $25 and said thanks for that all that I (and my volunteers) are doing around Natick. She mentioned that she has lived in the Dug Pond area for a number of years and that it looks better than ever, to which I replied that the Natick HS Earth Club (among others) has helped me enormously w/ this area over the past three years, and has more or less adopted Dug Pond as a Stewardship Project. I briefly described our Big Trash (Litter) Free Project making Natick the first community in Massachusetts to go "Trash-Free" in 2014, and how we're only a couple dozen volunteers short of reaching our goal. 
Today (Monday) I picked up a considerable amount of trash on the Mill St. Bridge, one of Natick's "Dirty Two Dozen." Noticed a common trademark -- high sugar, alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco products, a mixture of numbing and escape substances, plus a fair number of shredded lottery tickets (lost hope). Pain, anger, loss, ignorance and miseducation. Perhaps the most alarming and sad message was the disconnection from the earth, the neighborhood, community, wildlife and fellow citizens. How can we restore a sense of hope in these folks? How can we reconnect them to our community and the earth?