Where does litter come from?

As I’ve walked around with my eye trained on the ground, picking up litter, it has occurred to me to think about, and observe, where the litter comes from. I’ve noticed that one of the attitudes that prevent people from taking the simple step of picking up trash is that the trash is not their problem. I didn’t put the trash there, so why should I be the one to pick it up. I take a more pragmatic approach. Mohandas Gandhi said:

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do¹.

This is typically paraphrased as “we must be the change we want to see in the world”, which Gandhi never said, but it will serve for our purposes. If I want the trash picked up, the simplest and quickest way to achieve that effect is to pick it up myself. And in so doing, I model the right behavior to others. I’m exemplifying the change I want to see in the world.

The attitude of “that trash is not my problem because I didn’t put it there” got me musing about how and why the litter winds up on the ground. Here are some things I’ve noticed:

• For the most part, litter accumulates slowly. I’ll see one particular piece of litter in the same place for weeks or months at a time. When I clean up a stretch of a road, it tends to stay clean.
  
• On a windy day, if a piece of paper blows out of my hands, sometimes I can’t catch it and it blows out across traffic.
  
• Crows like to pick through uncovered trash cans for discarded food, and can scatter trash for a good distance.
  
• Teenagers will find places under and behind bushes to drink beer, and will create stashes of cans and bottles near convenience stores, teen centers, or abandoned lots. Because packing the empties out represents an opportunity to get caught with the contraband, it’s unlikely to happen.
  
• Around bus stops, the arrival of a bus causes people to jump up and run to catch it, causing them to forget their soda, coffee, or other beverage.
  
• Smokers are often conscientious about crushing their butts out on the ground with their feet, often right in front of a trash can, but don’t always follow up by picking the butt up and throwing it in the trash. I imagine the thought process is “I don’t want to catch the trash on fire”, followed by “that’s been on the ground and is now dirty.”
  
• When I pull something out of my pocket, sometimes a wrapper or napkin will fall out onto the ground and go unnoticed.
• At large events such as festivals or populous locations such as bus stops, often the accumulation of garbage in trash cans exceeds the rate of pickup. People continue to add trash to the can until it overflows.
• Sometimes people miss the can.

So, for the most part, I don’t believe that most of the trash on the ground is there because of malicious intent. Most of it is there as a side effect of other activities.

Who is on the hook for picking up the trash? Is it a government agency? Given the huge amounts of money we pay for government services already, are we willing to pay additional money for sufficient personnel to constantly police our public places?

I contend that the environment is all of our business, and that cultivating a sense of personal responsibility for keeping our world clean is the best way of maintaining the environment. The impact that I have picking up trash along one roadside has been noticeable and lasting. Imagine what would happen if everybody just picked up one piece of litter a day.

Food for thought.


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¹ (VOL 13, Ch 153, General Knowledge About Health; Page 241, Printed in the Indian Opinion on 9/8/1913 From The Collected Works of M.K.Gandhi;, via Gandhitopia.org)

Why pick up trash?

Why pick up trash? There are several reasons.

1. I don’t want to live in a world where there is trash on the ground
   
   The way I feel is directly influenced by my environment. Seeing trash on the ground makes me feel bad. Removing trash from areas where I frequently walk has a direct impact on the way I feel when I’m in the world. Furthermore, the impact goes beyond me to everyone who passes that place.


2. Removing trash discourages dumping and other antisocial behavior
   
   Imagine walking down the street with an empty can of soda. If the area you’re walking through looks clean and cared-for, would you be likely to leave the can there? What if the area is already littered with other cans? The Broken Windows theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixing_Broken_Windows) suggests that reducing litter directly impacts the tendency to litter more, which reduces the perception of the area as neglected, which reduces the attractiveness of the area to bad actors. There are some well-known examples of this in real life – for example, the Burnside skatepark project in downtown Portland, Oregon, where a simple cleanup effort by skateboarders in an empty lot under a freeway directly resulted in the cleanup and gentrification of an area that was formerly a haven for drug use and prostitution.


3. Picking up trash on the street helps to raise awareness and reduce stigma
   
   Why don’t people pick up trash whenever they see it? There are a number of social messages that we get from our peers and mentors that get in the way – everything from “trash is gross and you shouldn’t touch it” to “I didn’t leave it there so it’s somebody else’s problem.” The overall result is that there is social stigma attached to the act. When you pick up a piece of trash and throw it away, you are standing out, calling attention to yourself, bowing low physically and showing humility. There are all things that our culture discourages. If I pick up trash openly in public, I hope to help in some small way to wear away at that stigma, to let people know it’s ok and acceptable to pick up garbage. If I can encourage one other person to pick up trash, then my small effort becomes a seed for greater change.


4. Picking up garbage helps cultivate mindfulness and humility
   
   Having the goal of picking up trash helps me be conscious of my environment wherever I am. It gives me focus. Bowing to the ground and letting people see me performing an act that our culture sees as base helps me be humble. We all need a little bit more humility in our lives.


5. Picking up litter is direct action
   
   I want to give back to my community. Helping to keep my community clean is one of the most direct and immediate ways I can do this. There’s no waiting for a volunteer opportunity, no giving money to an organization that will spend a large proportion of my gift for overhead. Every piece of garbage I pick up makes my environment better, and I and others receive direct benefit.



6. People appreciate it
   
   From time to time, somebody will approach me and thank me for picking up trash. Whether or not you choose to join me in picking up one piece of trash a day, please take the time to say thanks every time you see somebody throwing away trash in an appropriate place.

One Piece A Day

Good Habits Start Young
I have been aware of garbage and our relationship to garbage from a young age. As a child growing up in Los Angeles, I was taken on more than one occasion to the supermarket dumpster to dig for perfectly usable food, thrown away for small defects. In middle school, I would stroll alleyways, poking around in trash cans for usable stuff. I found everything from three-ring binders, to a usable axe, to somebody's stash of Playboy magazines - the ultimate treasure haul for a pubescent boy.

At age 13, my brother and I took it upon ourselves to bring garbage bags from home and clean up a several-block stretch of Veteran Avenue in Westwood. The bags filled quickly, and there was still lots of trash left. Our parents were amazed at what we, two teenaged boys, had chosen to do.

As an adult and a parent, I have rediscovered the sense of community responsibility that goes along with wanting to clean up. I take my daughter for walks, and we carry bags to fill with roadside trash. I've adopted the bus stop by my house through the Metro Transit program, and I frequently stop by to ensure that any garbage in that block is in the provided trash can, and not lying on the side of the road.

One Piece A Day
One day, frustrated at the sheer volume of garbage everywhere, and the impossibility of ever cleaning it all up, I discovered a powerful idea. Rather than feeling like I need to pick up every piece of garbage, I gave myself permission to pick up only ONE piece. Picking up one piece of garbage makes a contribution. It leaves my environment better than I found it. It sets a positive example for others. And more than that, it is a very simple and achievable commitment.

Not long after starting this campaign, I became especially frustrated by the profusion of cigarette butts on the ground, often inches from a trash receptacle. Consequently. I've upped the ante and committed to picking up ONE piece of trash and ONE cigarette butt a day.

As it turns out, when I decided to start this blog to share my ideas, I found that this powerful idea is far from new. In coming up with this commitment, I was joining similar movements in other parts of the world. For example:

- The One Piece A Day campaign in Montana: http://onepieceaday.blogspot.com/
- The One Piece A Day campaign in Finland: http://www.litterproject.com/

In this blog, I'll share some of my reflections on the impact that this commitment has had on me and my community.

Most important, I ask YOU to join me by committing to pick up ONE piece of trash every day, no matter how small.

-Nick Dallett
Kirkland, Washington