In the process, we have unwittingly communicated a dangerous message: that caring for the environment is a punishment rather than a privilege and a civic duty.
Consider what happens in our schools. A student arrives late, and the punishment is to collect litter. Another makes noise during a lesson and is ordered to clean the pavements. A learner performs poorly in a class exercise and is threatened with mopping the classroom floor. The offences differ, but the punishment remains remarkably predictable: environmental work. We have turned activities that should inspire responsibility, cleanliness and environmental consciousness into instruments of intimidation.
What message are we sending to these young people? That collecting litter is an unpleasant task reserved for undisciplined children? That sweeping a pavement is beneath the dignity of a well-behaved student? That cleaning a classroom is something to be dreaded rather than embraced? If this is what our children learn in school, should we be surprised when they grow into adults who throw rubbish out of moving vehicles, dump waste in drainage channels and walk past litter without a second glance?
We cannot cultivate environmental responsibility by presenting environmental care as a punishment.
The same contradiction manifests itself in our correctional institutions. Prison inmates are sometimes assigned environmental duties, including planting trees, maintaining public spaces and participating in community-cleaning activities. Such programmes can be valuable when they promote rehabilitation, practical skills and community service. The problem arises when society views these activities primarily as punishment, reinforcing the perception that environmental work is an appropriate occupation for people who have fallen out of favour with the law.
There is nothing inherently degrading about planting a tree, sweeping a street or collecting litter. On the contrary, these activities contribute directly to public health, environmental conservation and human dignity. If an inmate plants a tree, society should celebrate the contribution to environmental restoration rather than focus exclusively on the offender's punishment. If a student cleans a classroom, the achievement should be a cleaner learning environment and a deeper understanding of shared responsibility, not the humiliation of the learner.
Unfortunately, our social attitudes have turned environmental care into a form of manual labour associated with low status. We seem to believe that respectable citizens should be protected from such duties, leaving them to cleaners, casual workers, schoolchildren in trouble and people serving sentences.
This is where our thinking goes fundamentally wrong.
Environmental degradation does not discriminate between the law-abiding and the law-breaking. Plastic bottles clog drainage systems regardless of who discarded them. Poor waste disposal threatens the health of disciplined and undisciplined citizens alike. Deforestation, soil erosion and polluted rivers affect entire communities. The environment does not recognise our social hierarchies, disciplinary records or professional titles. It simply responds to our actions and inactions.
Yet we continue to behave as though environmental responsibility can be delegated to other people.
A school principal may walk past litter because cleaners are employed to collect it. A teacher may ignore a dirty classroom because students can be ordered to clean it. A parent may throw rubbish carelessly, assuming that municipal workers will eventually remove it. A public official may neglect a dirty neighbourhood because environmental maintenance belongs to another department. In each case, responsibility is transferred to someone else.
The consequence is an entrenched culture of indifference in which everyone expects somebody else to care.
Kenya cannot achieve meaningful environmental transformation while maintaining this mentality. We may plant millions of trees, launch ambitious clean-up campaigns and introduce elaborate waste-management policies, but these initiatives will struggle to succeed if ordinary citizens continue to regard environmental care as somebody else's business.
The solution begins with a fundamental change in how we teach, practise and reward environmental responsibility.
In schools, environmental activities should become routine components of citizenship education rather than disciplinary weapons. Students should participate in cleaning classrooms, maintaining gardens, sorting waste and planting trees because these are essential responsibilities of a school community. Every learner, regardless of academic performance or disciplinary record, should understand that a clean environment is a collective achievement.
Teachers and school administrators must lead by example. A teacher who encourages students to keep their surroundings clean while carelessly discarding litter undermines the very values they seek to impart. School leaders should organise regular environmental activities in which students and staff participate together. Such collaboration would eliminate the artificial distinction between those who supervise cleanliness and those who perform it.
Parents also have a critical role. Environmental consciousness begins at home, where children observe how adults handle household waste, maintain their surroundings and treat public spaces. A parent who insists on a clean home but tolerates littering outside the gate teaches selective responsibility. Our children must learn that environmental cleanliness extends beyond the boundaries of private property.
Public institutions should embrace the same principle. Government officers, politicians, business executives, teachers and other professionals should participate visibly in environmental initiatives. When leaders join community members in cleaning public spaces or planting trees, they demonstrate that environmental stewardship is not restricted by occupation or social standing.
Importantly, we must change the language surrounding environmental work. Collecting litter should not automatically be described as punishment. Planting trees should not be portrayed as an unpleasant assignment. Cleaning a public space should be recognised as a contribution to the common good. Where community service is imposed as a legitimate consequence for wrongdoing, its rehabilitative purpose should be distinguished from the broader value of environmental care.
Our goal should be to create a society in which people clean their surroundings because they understand the consequences of neglect, not because they fear punishment.
Ultimately, environmental responsibility is a measure of our citizenship. The person who respects the law but throws rubbish into a drainage channel has failed the community just as surely as the person who violates other civic obligations. Conversely, a student who voluntarily picks up litter, a teacher who maintains a clean classroom and a prisoner who diligently tends to a tree are demonstrating values that society should encourage.
We must stop teaching our children that environmental care is what happens when they do something wrong. We must stop treating cleanliness as an obligation belonging exclusively to cleaners and other low-status workers. And we must abandon the comfortable illusion that good citizens can outsource their environmental responsibilities.
A clean environment is not a punishment to be endured. It is a public good to be protected, a shared responsibility to be embraced and a legacy to be passed on to future generations.
The day we begin cleaning our surroundings out of conviction rather than compulsion is the day we will have taken a significant step towards genuine environmental consciousness.
Until then, we shall continue punishing people for misbehaviour while allowing the environment to suffer from our collective irresponsibility.
Ashford is a teacher of English and Literature and writes on education and social affairs
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