Friday morning I headed to Spin Laundry Lounge to get coffee, work, and do laundry. I live in a conversion van, I’m conscious of the environmental impacts of the consumer lifestyle. I do my best to minimize waste, any organic scraps I prefer to return to the earth. Call me crazy.

I threw my banana peels onto a pile of plantlife recently plowed over by the construction site working there. Walking towards Spin, a pompous type construction worker blurted “don’t throw your trash on our site“. “Wasn’t trash, it was banana peels.” I replied. “Doesn’t matter, that’s littering!” he fired back. I said “actually, it does matter, bananas come from the earth.” He’d already turned away.

I’m a weird looking person living in a van. Maybe he’s having a rough day, anything’s possible. Went inside, enjoyed the great atmosphere, coffee, and machines at Spin. Nearly forgot about it until I returned to my van where someone had thrown the banana peels onto my windshield. I windshield wipered the banana peels onto the construction site driveway and drove away.

These are seeds of things growing in our city. If energy passing through the hands of workers erecting structures around us comes from priggishness and ignorance, so will the fruits they bear. If you abhor the breakdowns of our connected, accepting, progressive lifestyles, compost your banana peels on the corner of Albina and Cook. Prove to these corporate funded eco-terrorists they’ve been “caught slipping” and we see them.