Hash House Harriers: cleaning up the world while enjoying nature
The Hash House Harriers are a global group of "drinkers with a running problem" that operate in all manner of environments. Although it is not some sort of official thing most of the groups are very environmentally-aware and active and that is certainly true in Chiang Mai. One might say that our job is a lot easier than other parts of the world since littering in Thailand just seems to be the norm.
Every now and then we will get updates about how Hash chapters around the world go out and clean up an area of their city/country and often, it is a little disappointing to me to see that places that actually DO have what is considered good waste-management seem to also have bad littering problems as well.
I was kind of stunned to find out that a Hash chapter in Madison, Wisconsin, USA was able to collect 20 bags of garbage in mostly parkland, in just over an hour of collecting. Maybe I feel like I can point the finger at the irresponsible nature of the general public in a place like that a bit more than I can in Thailand because here in Thailand as well as probably all of the surrounding countries, we have virtually zero waste management and outside of certain parts of the country that are visited by tourists, there is no government-funded clean up personnel. We also don’t pay very much in taxes though and most of the population here is quite poor and therefore get a bit of a pass on caring about the environment. I think that if you are struggling to eat, you can get some leeway about not properly disposing of your trash, because that means very different things in different parts of the world.
Kudos to these guys though for taking time out of their day to go and clean up an area that I can only presume has salaried people whose job it is that you are doing for them. I think I would be a bit upset if I were in your shoes though.
No Hash House Harriers event would be complete without people acting silly and I was quite pleased to see that this tradition is being kept alive all around the world.
Here in Chiang Mai, we make it a priority to never litter and on most runs our slower members will carry bags with them and pick up a bunch of garbage along the way. We do have limits to what we can do though because some of the trash is covered in much and we don't carry around the safety stick grabber things. We do what we can and we always clean up the place a bit wherever we go. I think that this is probably part of the reason why we almost never get in trouble for trespassing even though almost all of the time that is exactly what we are doing. When the land owners see us emerge from their property with bags of garbage that we picked up I can sometimes see a bit of a look of shame on their faces... either that or it is gratitude.
The Hash House Harriers are a truly wonderful group of people all around the world. I have been to events on nearly every continents and at some point in my life I would really love to attend the Antarctica HHH although I don't think you can just go and do that because you feel like it. I'm pretty sure you need a scientific reason to be down there at all. You know, with the whole potentially freezing to death and what not, it isn't just a place you go and book a room and the Hilton and just wander around the gardens.
On on!
