Homeless people recycle...

.............A LOT!

Most of their belongings are second-hand and many homeless people gather bottles and cans to take to the bottle depot in order to make money.

Homeless people don't burn up much in utilities...even if they are considered 'without a fixed address' and they're in a shelter, we're dealing with anywhere from 40 - 4000 people under the same roof, using the same source of heating, and this saves utility money.

Water is a different story in the shelters, however, most homeless/shelter dwelling people, no matter how hygiene-conscious, are only able to take limited showers - due to the high populations and wait times in the shelters.

Homeless people make things...out of broken down, everyday, household items that we throw out...this is called recycling and is actually quite amazing.

Outside my home, a few years ago, I stopped to watch a 'regular' dumpster digger in the alley. He had made a special 'tool' out of things he found in the dumpsters. This tool was made from wires, coathangers and springs and functioned as an 'extended hand,' able to grasp things about 4 feet beyond regular reach. The tool had levers and was extremely functional and allowed the man to dig into dumpsters without getting dirty. I stopped to talk with the man and he said that he'd made a few of the same gadgets for his friends. They liked to stay clean while searching for useful, mendable objects because they often were able to find temporary work for part of the day doing other things.

So much for the 'lazy bum' and 'stupid bum' theories surrounding homelessness, eh?

Most homeless people don't drive a vehicle to work, though many of them do have jobs.

How can this NOT be considered environmentally friendly?

Most of the working homeless use public transit or carpooling and 'work crew pickup services,' so this means that when they are paying for transit fares, they are also supporting urban transit companies - AS WELL AS - helping to lessen the impact of exhaust pollution by not pointing their own wheels down the roadways.

Aside from that, sometimes, poverty is generational, too. That is, poverty can be passed down from generation to generation. Often, if parents cannot overcome poverty situations, then their children will also have to deal with poverty during their lifetimes.

Not to worry...as I've already shown, this can all be GOOD for our environment!

Homeless people recycle almost everything from clothing, right down to pop bottles!

Some homeless people are capable of making cool gadgets out of broken down items that we throw away - so we don't have to worry that we're throwing anything away that might still be of use.

Homeless people use less utility energy and save urban centres a lot in utillity fees!

Homeless people rarely drive, thus, they avoid contributing to air pollution!

Sometimes homeless people make MORE homeless people out of their children so that society can have a group of people who will recycle, make gadgets, use our old clothing, take the bus, and save utility energy!

Do you see now? We should actually be GRATEFUL for all the homeless people we encounter, for without them, we would be a society that wastes household items, uses too much gas, leaves our pop bottles laying around and pollutes the air quality in our living areas!

Now if we could only just get those homeless people to start using LESS WATER when they're living in the shelters!

All in all, I guess it turns out that governments actually DO KNOW what they're doing after all...

In the way that they design social welfare programs that consistently keep people far under the poverty cut off lines and whereby the programs are rarely updated to keep up with inflation in the cost of living...

(so that people can become homeless and start to enact better ways of saving the environment!)

In the way that they have turned those with mental illness OUT of facilities and into the streets since around the 1970s...

(so that people can end up homeless and support mass city transit systems)

In the way that government forgets to assess the pertinent needs of the elderly when they reach pension age - so that pensions do not reflect the realities of either inflation or individual pensioners' health necessities.

(so that people can have NO significant ownership of items to pass on to future generations, leaving their later generations with a head start on the road to homelessness and poverty!)

Okay - so this hub IS ridiculous...

Being in a state of poverty isn't actually a state of being 'environmentally friendly' but I was trying to show that, although there are people without homes, they are NOT the kind of huge BURDEN on society that people often say they are.

Homeless people are environmentally conscious like many other folks and with the story about the 'gadget-making' fellow, I hoped to show that homeless people are regular, smart people who are very resourceful. Mostly, they care about their appearance, have the same manners as you and I, but they simply have less money than is necessary for living.

Should they have to be bottle collectors and gadget makers?

I don't think they should have to be - but regardless, most people in a state of impoverished living often utilize resources much better than people who aren't FORCED to find ways to make handy gadgets out of other peoples' throw-away items.

What do you think you could make with a few wires, a couple of old springs and 2 coat hangers?