Who litters our city?

Who drops their trash on the ground all over our town and county?  A lot of people like to blame vagrants, or tourists, or teenagers, or even spoiled rich kids.  Generally, it's something one is not.

As the Litter Cleaner, I believe that, generally, those who clean up litter do not drop it except by accident.  An observed exception is a habitual subconscious litterer who has been a janitor for only a few years of a long working life, who has a great ability to separate work and the rest of life and to ignore ugliness and disorder away from work. 

But your subconscious litterer starts out littering consciously as a child, sometimes out of laziness or revulsion, sometimes out of rebellion.  The Litter Cleaner once balled up her gum wrappers, and sometimes her gum in them, and discreetly dropped them, before she became totally offended by litter.  Someone else once saw himself as the anti-hero "Litterman," and threw his trash defiantly to the wind, before his youthful rebellion hardened into subconscious habit.

Disorderly vagrants appear to pick and guard their campsites with litter, leaving some and seeing if it gets picked up.  If it doesn’t, or if there is old trash, it’s a safe place to leave their stuff.  They keep leaving more until they leave, sometimes sleeping on it.  Broken glass is a warning to respectable, orderly people to stay away; they break bottles deliberately. 

Vagrant camp below the Wastewater Treatment Plant, 5 days old.

Orderly homeless folks leave no sign of their sleeping except, perhaps, a cleared space.  Both are generally gone before daylight reveals them to passing walkers; it is perfectly safe, though tedious, to clean up the camps of the disorderly.

But walking around residential neighborhoods, the Litter Cleaner sees that it is mostly residents who litter the streets of the City.  It must be residents, because I see much less litter by the river along the walking/biking trails used by both vagrants and exercise enthusiasts where I regularly clean up than in neighborhoods that get the same treatment.  

It has gotten to the point that I drive my dog to the park and walk him along the trails to avoid having to see the litter on the streets and yards between my weekly litter cleanup in my neighborhood.  It's too painful not to pick it up, but picking it up slows us down too much for aerobic exercise.  I tend to avoid parking lots and shelters within the park on my dog walk for the same reason, but since I have to use one parking lot, I've adopted the Harry and David shelter area and parking lot for 5-day-a week cleaning along with my walking route, as a demonstration of what almost daily cleaning can do.

Some properties are littered from the street to the door; most are clean or littered only on or near the street.  Some have free Country Weeklies mouldering in their driveways; if they do, there is other litter as well.  Some have beer cans right up by the sidewalk, behind their fence.  

Children who live in such houses are not taught to pick up their litter, so they drop it, following their parents’ example.  Some are explicitly taught that the world is theirs to mess up; they can go wherever they want, leave whatever they want, and it is supposed to be there when they return.

There are other children who are not taught to pick up litter; the children of the “filthy rich” who are picked up after by house cleaners and gardeners, whom an ex-house cleaner once said were the worst for filthy houses, while middle-class customers would clean before their cleaner. 

But the poor and middle class are not exempt, when their mothers clean up after them constantly, rather than doing the hard work of teaching them to clean up after themselves.  The youthful rebellion mentioned above may have been against just such a mother.  I often reflected, when growing up, that our mom worked harder getting us to do our chores than if she’d done them herself, but I knew why she did it.

Some children, I have learned, are explicitly taught to not pick up litter, because their parents are afraid of germs.  They may not drop it, but they've been taught to ignore it.

In the commercial zones, the most littered places tend to be bars, fast food, and convenience stores.  Some car repair shops are pretty bad, too.  Some, particularly fast food restaurants, do frequent lot pickup; others ignore it.  One can tell which by the old litter.  One suspects that the yards of the ignoring owners are littered as well, but maybe they separate their work and home in the opposite manner of our janitor.

But then there are Walmart, Walgreens, and other large corporations, who do only what local police or their corporation make them do.  In the absence of litter code enforcement, Walmart has a crew come in every two weeks to clean up the trash, when they need one employee dedicated to constant litter cleaning during store hours to actually obey our code and not let litter lie on their property and blow to the vacant lot across the street.

Walgreens, Williams Hwy, Grants Pass, at the front door

Walmart, Terry Lane, Grants Pass, bark long since evaporated or blown away.

Walmart, Newport Oregon.  It's a newer store with newer bark.

Let us not forget the vacant lot owners who might mow their lot against fire danger occasionally, but don’t pick up the litter on it.  Mowing just divides the litter and thereby multiplies it; it builds up either way. 

We have many vacant properties in this city, despite the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) and the restrictions on building outside it that boost the price of city property, because our city does not enforce its nuisance codes against weeds and litter.  The owners can just pay the low “unimproved” property taxes until someone pays them what they think their lot is worth.  If they had to eliminate the noxious and nuisance weeds and keep the litter picked up, they would lower their prices.

Seeing litter provokes littering.  The subconscious eye sees all, while the conscious sees only what it is trained to see by the subconscious.  Littered streets, parking lots, and vacant lots tell the subconscious that this is a place for trash, and people drop it.  The ugliness of weeds tells the under-mind to drop one’s ugly trash among the ugliness where it will be less noticeable. 

It takes a truly hardened litterer to drop trash on clean property.  Smokers top the list with their butts, and bring on the rest.  An ex-customer of mine, who now contributes to this cause, once told me that smokers are naturally careless people. 

Fishermen would be better thought of if they picked up litter before they fished an area, rather than leaving their bait cups, lines, and such, not to mention their butts, bottles and cans. 

But there would be little litter in this city if our police would enforce our litter nuisance code against property owners and residents.  If it were not allowed to lie on private or public property, it would be gone.  If parents were warned by police about their litter, most would make their children clean it up and warn them against dropping it.  By talking to those who tolerate litter, police would get acquainted with most of the people who commit other crimes, as a litterer does not love his neighbors and is apt to show it in other ways as well.

I lived in Snohomish County, Washington when the city of Everett decided to start enforcing their code against litter.  An unemployed friend immediately started making money, cleaning up business properties.  If our code was fully enforced, quite a few people could make money cleaning up this town and keeping it clean, and community corrections slaves could work on weeding our public properties.

This is one reason why I have applied for a city temp job, hoping to become the city’s permanent, dedicated litter cleaner.  The city has been making great strides in cleaning up its properties, but it needs a dedicated litter cleaner, not just people doing other jobs as well.  They need their other cleaners, to be sure, but also one who can see the tiny stuff and has the fire in her belly to pick up every litter bit.  Once its own properties are really clean, it can enforce its code against everyone else, and get us to clean up our city.