America the Ugly?
THE PROBLEM
America's Love Affair With Littering
By Alan Bisbort, Hartford Advocate
Not so long ago in America, the very idea of littering -- the wanton,
stupid and illegal disposal of trash -- was generally regarded as
barbaric, something piteously subhuman and far-fetched, like a missile
shield, faith-based government programs or Creationism.
Take a look around today. Drive down any street, highway or interstate,
walk through any park, push aside the beleaguered botany in any public
garden, in rich and in poor neighborhoods, in rural areas, urban
landscapes and suburban blight, and it is quickly obvious litter has
made a roaring comeback.
Statistics would be impossible to compile for the sheer quantity of
litter, but anyone who opens their eyes to it will see that the act of
littering occurs more often than, say, spitting on the sidewalk or
farting and belching in public. In short, littering now seems as
American as apple pie and violence.
What ever happened to the outrage over litter? And what does it say
about us as a species -- or more importantly our future on this planet
-- that so many of us are collectively fine with the idea that the world
is our garbage can?
Keep America Beautiful, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to
"empowering individuals to take greater responsibility for enhancing
their local community environment," offers some insights into the
problem. The group has studied litter and littering for 47 years, and
has sponsored thousands of local clean-up efforts around the country.
According to their surveys, litter is caused by any of the following:
pedestrians, motorists, uncovered trucks, loading docks, construction
sites, improper residential refuse set-out and improper commercial
refuse set-out. Of all litter, 40 percent is accidental, such as
something blowing out of a dump truck, while much of the 60 percent
that's intentional occurs in places where litter has already
accumulated.
But while Keep America Beautiful can generally identify litter's
sources, the organization can only make educated guesses about why
people litter. "Nobody has a definitive answer," says Walt Amaker, Keep
America Beautiful's communications director. "More than anything else,
it's just apathy. Illegal dumping is an entirely different issue from
everyday littering, of course."
(snip)
"In a way, we're at the same place we
were 47 years ago, when the organization was formed. It's almost like
we're fighting a losing battle," he says. "We did a nationwide survey in
1999, and one of the things we discovered was that 75 percent of those
Americans we interviewed admitted to littering in the previous five
years. And yet, if we'd asked them if they enjoyed having a clean
environment, I'll bet 999 out of a thousand would say 'yes.'"
A recent Northwestern Mutual insurance company survey of graduating
college seniors reveals a similar dichotomy. The survey stated: "People
have different ideas about what's right and wrong. As I read things some
people do, tell me whether you think each one is absolutely wrong under
all circumstances, wrong under most but not all circumstances, wrong
only sometimes, or not wrong at all. Item 1. Tossing out trash while
driving."
Of the college students surveyed, 77 percent said this was "absolutely
wrong," 13 percent "mostly wrong," 9 percent "sometimes wrong." This was
not far enough removed from the national average to indicate a deep
pathological change; still, the anti-litter horror is not quite as
strong as it once was, if one compares the above survey of young adults
to the nationwide statistics: 89 percent saw it as "absolutely wrong," 6
percent "mostly wrong," 5 percent "sometimes wrong."
This disconnect from reality -- overwhelming numbers of people who say
they love a clean environment, and yet overwhelming numbers of littering
violations -- baffles anyone who confronts this problem. Even
psychologists who have studied this problem can't agree. Some think the
answer may come down to something as mundane as inconvenience.
"People litter for the simple reason that it is the easiest way to get
rid of unwanted things," says Francis T. McAndrew, a professor of
environmental psychology at Knox College in Calesburg, Illinois. "You do
not have to take the trouble to find a place to dispose of it and carry
it there."
McAndrew, whose studies of littering and litterers comprise a portion of
his widely used college text, Environmental Psychology (Brooks/Cole,
1992), has even delineated what groups are likeliest to litter.
"Young people litter more than older people, men litter more than women,
people living in rural areas litter more than urban residents, and
people who are alone litter more than people in groups," he says. "Some
studies show that there is a relationship between the types of outdoor
activities one engages in and the likelihood of littering. Bird
watchers, nature walkers, and canoeists litter very little. Hunters,
fishermen, campers, motorboaters, and waterskiiers litter a lot."
Steve Sherwood, a psychologist at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah,
looks at litter from a different perspective. A former national park
staffer, Sherwood is painfully aware of the peculiar pathology that
drives people to litter in wilderness areas.
"The easiest answer as to why people defile their most beloved park
lands is that litterers are vandals with little sense of the damage they
do, whose parents raised them badly," says Sherwood. "This may be true,
but litterers do more than show a casual disregard for the environment.
For many, littering may provide a means of asserting personal freedom,
setting territory, even soothing fears. People may mark the wilderness
to make it less threatening ... for litterers, and perhaps for all of
us, the wilderness may serve as both spiritual recharger and psychic
trash dump."
Sherwood thinks littering in the wilderness may, in part, be a deeply
embedded, "ancient" need to establish territory. "In national parks, the
most common temporary territories are fishing holes and campsites ... we
could tell the best fishing holes along a given lake or stream by the
number of discarded beer cans we found," he says. "Changing brand names
even told us where one hole ended and another began, as if the space an
angler needed matched the distance he or she could cast an empty can."
Those of us who see litter on a daily basis might be less generous in
our psychological assessments of these littering miscreants. In a word,
they are pigs, not to mention lawbreakers. Ironically, although
littering itself is on the rise, the laws, if anything, have become
stricter and the penalties harsher. Check out those scarifying roadside
signs that vow Ayatollah-like severity for litterers, with some fines as
high as $1,000. And yet, have you ever seen anyone pulled over for
littering? Has anyone, besides Arlo Guthrie, ever gotten a ticket for
littering?
One of Amaker's contentions is that, like gun laws, litter laws are on
the books; they are simply not enforced or with only the lowest
priority. This lax enforcement only makes it easier for Americans to
disconnect from reality on this issue.
(snip)
Auntie Litter
Americans, as we are constantly reminded these days by the rest of the
world, are the planet's premier wasters. In addition to the gas-guzzling
SUVs that we continue to purchase despite all logic to the contrary, we
toss out 2.5 million plastic bottles an hour, creating four pounds of
garbage per person per day. With only 5 percent of its population, we
produce half the world's waste.
So, where does all that garbage go? You guessed it. Litter.
Auntie Litter is a one-woman education machine trying to change that.
"Auntie Litter" is Pat Mitchell, a former schoolteacher in Birmingham,
Ala., who has turned her fears about the fate of the earth and her
obsessions with litter into a personal crusade. She created the
character of Auntie Litter to be the moral equivalent of Uncle Sam.
(snip)
"Litter shows a lack of pride, lack of education and laziness," she
concludes after more than a decade of studying the problem. "People have
the sense that they can throw their trash anywhere and volunteers will
organize to pick it up. They still think a big mommy will pick up after
them. Some just don't want the trash in the car, so they put it out of
their sight, not making a connection to what they are really doing."
(snip)
Sometimes, she admits the fight seems overwhelming. "I'm not going to
tie myself to a tree," she said. "But I can understand why people would
do that."
So does Sherwood. "With so many forces arrayed on the side of littering,
a person can't help feeling pessimistic," he says.
A SOLUTION (Curitiba, Brazil)
Curitiba is referred to as the ecological capital of Brazil, with a
network of 28 parks and wooded areas. In 1970, there was less than 1
square meter of green space per person; now there are 52 square meters
for each person. Residents planted 1.5 million trees along city streets.
Builders get tax breaks if their projects include green space. Flood
waters diverted into new lakes in parks solved the problem of dangerous
flooding, while also protecting valley floors and riverbanks, acting as
a barrier to illegal occupation, and providing aesthetic and
recreational value to the thousands of people who use city parks.
The "green exchange" employment program focuses on social inclusion,
benefiting both those in need and the environment. Low-income families
living in shantytowns unreachable by truck bring their trash bags to
neighborhood centers, where they exchange them for bus tickets and food.
This means less city litter and less disease, less garbage dumped in
sensitive areas such as rivers and a better life for the undernourished
poor. There's also a program for children where they can exchange
recyclable garbage for school supplies, chocolate, toys and tickets for
shows.
Under the "garbage that's not garbage" program, 70% of the city's trash
is recycled by its residents. Once a week, a truck collects paper,
cardboard, metal, plastic and glass that has been sorted in the city's
homes. The city's paper recycling alone saves the equivalent of 1,200
trees a day. As well as the environmental benefits, money raised from
selling materials goes into social programs, and the city employs the
homeless and recovering alcoholics in its garbage separation plant.
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