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)