That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of socially innovative things to be done.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is a “Clean-Up Day.” It’s something I used to do in Anchorage. When the snow melts each spring, heaps of litter suddenly surfaces and the city looks like a dump. So every spring, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of volunteers scour the streets and parks, packing bright orange garbage bags full of rogue cigarette butts, plastic bottles and occasionally other, more novel rubbish (I once found a 2L bottle of K-Y Jelly in a marsh).

Three things about this idea:

1)  Edinburgh looks like a dump in many areas too, and could certainly benefit from a clean-up.

2)  The event requires little in the way of organisation, infrastructure or funding.

3)  Apparently the founders of Skype organised a similar event for their fellow Estonians, who proceeded to clean the entirety of Estonia in a single day.

I’m not trying to promote a litter removal arms race, but I think we can do better. Let’s clean all of Scotland in an hour. One-handed. Who’s with me?

Image credit: Jason Argo