WHY ARE THERE STILL LITTERBUGS? Time to Dump on Trash Tossers

What would happen if a child never saw a piece of litter on the ground, or never saw a grown-up toss a piece of garbage out the car window – a scrunched-up bag from a convenience or fast-food store, a cigarette butt, even an apple core – would a kid come up with that idea on their own and jettison their refuse with no regard for the impact on the landscape or the driver behind them? Would they resist the impulse and wait until they found a proper receptacle to discard their trash responsibly?  What inspires a person to simply throw something on the ground if they are done with it? Do they think a litter fairy comes to pick it up? Is it considered “biodegradable”? BTW, cigarette butts do NOT just disintegrate!

Maybe I’m dating myself using the word “Litterbug” to describe these pesky culprits. Apparently, a litter bug is a type of giant burrowing cockroach, and is not actually a true bug in nature. But litterbugs, as I have known them, have always bugged me! And it seems they are still an abundant species. I just don’t get why such a simple concept of keeping our public spaces clean is so often disregarded. It’s careless and lazy behavior with an impact that affects our communities and our world, beyond just spoiling a pretty picture.

While I don’t expect a young child to understand that roadside garbage affects property values and costs businesses and governments money, responsible adults can certainly model their personal obligation not to litter and teach about environmental consequences and encourage a sense of pride in maintaining the beauty of public spaces, walkways, beaches and parks. It seems many folks figure someone else will clean up after them. And that’s what the kids pick up – or don’t pick up, as the case may be.

I’ve witnessed countless acts of blatant littering, many of which included a parent flinging their garbage aside right in front of their children – can’t think of how many times I’ve been traveling behind a car on a roadway and had a lit cigarette end up on my hood or under my car. Statistics show cigarette butts are the most littered item on US roadways. And it’s not just smokers. I recall walking to my car in a store parking lot when a young teen in the passenger seat of a vehicle parked next to mine discarded a candy wrapper of some kind out her window and it landed at my feet. With my own child as witness, I picked up the piece of trash, small as it was, and returned it to the debutant litterbug as her mother sat in the driver’s seat, tight-lipped. “You dropped this,” I told her, and then pointed out the garbage cans on the way into the store that she could use. I wondered what her room looked like at home.

In an age where we make efforts to recycle our plastic and aluminum containers and reuse shopping bags, and there are positive groups uniting for environmental awareness campaigns and beach sweeps, it seems time that a message to our kids regarding a more responsible attitude of putting garbage in its proper place should not go to waste.