For most adults, their mommy stopped cleaning up after them a long, long time ago. But if you look roadside in Jefferson County, it seems like some people never got the memo.
Some motorists seem to believe there is a magic cleaning fairy who comes along behind them, picking up the trash they throw out their car window.
What I can’t wrap my head around is why? Why throw trash out of the car instead of just waiting until they get to their destination to throw it in a trash can? It’s not as if empty soda bottles, chip bags and fast-food wrappers are radioactive and will harm you if not removed from the vehicle immediately upon finishing them. I’m currently teaching my 16-month-old toddler that throwing things on the ground when he’s done with them is a no-no, so surely adults can understand the concept.
I tried researching the mindset of a litterbug, and over and over I kept finding that the number one reason people litter is a lack of education about the need to dispose of waste properly. Studies show that litter can be decreased by 50 percent or more through educational campaigns, such as signs, printed messages on packaging and presentations about the harmful impacts of litter.
So in that spirit: Listen up! Littering is selfish, gross and harmful! Litter lowers property values; discourages economic development and tourism; can contaminate soil and water; and can injure wildlife. It’s also a safety hazard. Besides being a breeding ground for fire and disease, litter causes traffic accidents when drivers swerve to avoid the trash.
Not only that, but it’s expensive. In 2023, litter cleanup cost the Missouri Department of Transportation $13.6 million.
How’s that for an information campaign?
Surely this isn’t new information to most people. I mean, didn’t these people watch Captain Planet? What about the commercial with the crying Native American man canoeing down the trash-filled river? Didn’t they see Woodsy Owl telling them to “Give a hoot – don’t pollute”? Is any of this ringing a bell? Don’t these people have any pride in where they live?
Recently, a reader reached out to me to vent her frustration about the seeming lack of accountability for litterbugs.
“They have signs out there that say $1,000 fine for littering. Have they ever caught anybody and fined them the $1,000?” she asked me.
I wondered the same thing, so I asked a local police officer if littering is a crime that’s enforced in his city. He said he had written numerous littering citations, including for drivers who had thrown out trash during a traffic stop. How often does a person have to be littering for it to be so second nature to them that they’d do it in front of a cop?
I’ve spoken to several people who have participated in road cleanups, and every volunteer told me the amount of trash they collect is staggering, often 20-30 bags or more within a mile or less. They said some items are pretty common, such as soda bottles and Styrofoam cups; snack wrappers; floss picks; beer and alcohol containers; vape cartridges and articles of clothing, but they’ve also found more unusual things, such as tires, hubcaps, construction materials, and one volunteer even said he found used colostomy bags.
“We have actually had people throw trash out as we were picking it up,” the volunteer told me.
The Adopt A Highway program, which began in 1987, has recently been discontinued, with cost and safety concerns cited. MoDOT is allowing people with existing contracts to continue until their expiration dates, with the final ones scheduled to end in 2026. It’s being replaced by the Keeping Missouri Beautiful Program, which allows communities to participate in an annual cleanup after signing safety forms.
I worry that replacing a program that has quarterly cleanups with one annual cleanup will result in even more trashed-up roadways. I’d like to think that if litterbugs started seeing the actual yearly accumulation of trash they throw out, they might begin to understand how harmful it is. However, studies show that the more litter a place has, the more it actually encourages other people to litter.
I’ve heard people say, “We pay taxes to have road workers; why can’t they pick up trash?” Missouri has 33,808 miles of state highways to maintain, putting us seventh nationally in state highway miles, despite being 21st in the nation in size. Compare that to the state highway mileage of our neighbors: Illinois, 15,894; Iowa, 8905; Kansas, 10,297; Nebraska, 9,939; Oklahoma, 12,252; Arkansas, 16,454; Tennessee, 14,066; and Kentucky, 27,690, That’s a heavy load for our Department of Transportation. Despite our huge amount of roads to maintain, Missouri has one of the lowest fuel taxes in the country, ranking us 47th nationally in revenue per mile.
MoDOT has faced mass worker shortages for years, with departing workers citing low pay as the reason for their resignation. Missouri has some of the lowest paid state workers in the country. I sincerely doubt they have the labor force available to pull workers off roadwork to have them pick up trash on any sort of regular basis. Even if they did, MoDOT estimates the cost for workers to pick up roadside trash at about $18 per bag. I’d rather my tax dollars go toward fixing potholes, not cleaning up after lazy, selfish, irresponsible litter bugs.
Let me make a bold statement: If you intentionally litter, you are a garbage person.
And that includes those of you who don’t clean up after your dogs and leave their waste on the sidewalk where children play. But that’s a rant for another day.