Wal-Mart: Not a good neighbor

This is Wal-Mart’s most common form of advertising.

Wal-Mart bags litter our community.

Have you noticed them in yours?

All winter long, I’ve driven past this field, staring at Wal-Mart’s advertising.

Hundreds of bags littered this field.

Disgusted by it, I snapped photos and twice paid a visit to managers at the local Wal-Mart store. Look, I said. Do you see this trash? This is your trash. It is littering our city.

Both times managers told me they were going to send a team out to clean up the field. We will take care of it, they promised.

Both of them. Both times.

But they never did.

This past Sunday was so very sunny and beautiful.

When Tim and I left church we decided we were going to go for a hike out the Gorge.

As soon as we cleaned up that field.

The field is not ours. We don’t own it. Our property doesn’t even back up to it.

It’s just an eyesore in town that bugs me. All that litter. All that Wal-Mart advertising.

So we spent hours on Sunday, walking that field picking up trash. Five bags full of Wal-Mart bags.

A lot of people drove by while Tim and I were working. I kept imagining that they would see us working and pretty soon it would be like a flash mob in that field. The whole town would turn out and help clean up the mess that Wal-Mart makes. Tim says that’s why I’m a writer – I’m delusional.

Several people slowed down and watched us. Some drove by us a couple of different times. But there was no flash mob of people helping clean the field. I was going to take a photo of the field cleaned but when I drove back by there today it was littered with Wal-Mart bags again. Not as many but they are there.

Wal-mart’s free advertising litters our community. But I’m not giving up. I’m sending this post to the city manager and to Wal-Mart headquarters.

Here in my town, Wal-Mart is not a good neighbor.

How about where you live?