I am disappointed in everyone right now. Why everyone? Because I don’t know who is doing it but our roadways and public spaces look like shit. Trash is everywhere and it pisses me off.
Growing up we had litter campaigns. Where did they go?
I don’t recall the last time I saw a message about not littering. Growing up in the 90’s that message was everywhere. Give a Hoot Don’t Pollute; Love Where You Live and more were repeated to help folks clean up. They did turn into reduce, reuse, recycle in some ways but that slogan never made sense. Those of us who grew up GenX had no choice but to do that. We were the latchkey generation and had to make the most out of nothing.
This is my drive today in Maryland.
Excuse my truck mirror in the photo but what’s important here is the litter on the side of the road. Plastic bottles, cans, bags, and more strewn about. The short video below shows 20 seconds of driving at 55MPH. It’s slowed down so you can see the trash on the road.
What do we do about it?
My hope is that you are upset by this as well. There are roughly 251 million adults in the US. If we all picked up 1 piece of trash per day, every single day, we could eliminate litter from the US in a matter of weeks. Especially if we also stopped littering at the same time. I don’t have the power to engage that many people but if each reader of this article helps out we can make a difference.