Walmart, Keep Your Lot Clean

When this litter-cleaning protester started cleaning Walmart’s lot one day back in January, one of their managers forbade me to do so, perhaps recognizing that it was not a service; it was a protest of their litter. 

She said that they have a crew that cleans their lot, every two weeks.  I pointed out that every two weeks was clearly not enough.  She said that they also send out people to clean as needed.  And yet, their lot was very littered.  “We have too much volume to keep up with it!” she cried.  I said that meant that they make enough money to keep it clean, yet I have never seen anyone cleaning their lot, though I have at other stores.

Grants Pass Walmart, January

I called Walmart headquarters about their litter cleaning policies.  They said that they have a separate litter crew clean every other week, and clean otherwise as needed.  I told them that, at this store, it is not cleaned as needed.  While traveling later that year, I checked out Walmarts in other cities; they were just as bad as ours.  It seems that Walmart, like many corporations, has a policy of doing no more than local police make them do to comply with city codes, and like ours, many cities don’t push them to keep their lot clean.

Newport Walmart, March

Fast food franchises also have a lot of disorderly customers, but they actually work at keeping their little lots clean, sending out a worker several times a day to clean, to protect their franchise reputations.  People expect restaurants to be clean, outside as well as inside.

Fairly new bark in Grants Pass Walmart lot, holding litter, mostly butts

Letting litter lie around Walmart’s lot builds the disorderly habitat that criminals prefer, contributing to theft in their lot.  Having a few people out in the lot cleaning all the time would not only make the place more orderly; it would provide security to shoppers.  Cameras are useful mainly after the crime and cover limited areas; a person working on litter cleaning can see someone breaking into a car and call the cops immediately, and criminals know it.

Litter, mostly under bottle machines, because they sweep rather than using a grabber

The tools provided for cleaners by the bottle machines: brooms and a dustpan

As one of the largest stores and parking lots in town, they set a bad example for the rest; other large stores seem to follow their lead.  They have improved slightly lately, but are clearly not giving their workers sufficient time and proper tools to do the job, as small litter abounds.  Litter cleaners need litter grabbers, an item that Walmart sells and could easily provide to their cleaners.  They should have 3 or 4 cleaners with grabbers and buckets in their lot during the day and evening hours, working on it for their whole shift, and rotate that duty among their newer workers, teaching all of their employees not to litter and to pick it up when they see it.

Lots of little litter means not enough time spent or proper tools used

Walmart shows their contempt for their customers and employees by not keeping their lot clean.  Most of us do not litter, and we would prefer a clean parking lot.

Special December issue, at GPlittercleaner.blogspot.com and at the Mail Center, 305 NE 6^th St. 

Gardening is easy if you do it naturally.  Litter is tagging, marking the territory of the disorderly.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener                 541-955-9040             rycke@gardener.com

Picketing: Extreme Peer Pressure

A few years ago, in an article in the Grants Pass Daily Courier about my problem with the litter and weed problems in this city, our then-City-Manager Laurel Samson said, “We enforce our nuisance codes by peer pressure.”  Trouble was then and still is that almost no peers are willing to apply it.  Like any necessary evil, it doesn’t necessarily win one friends, and it can be dangerous when one tries to correct a disorderly person.  This is why we have police, public nags, to do dangerous jobs like telling someone that one’s property is disorderly and one needs to clean it up.

But our city police presently are forbidden to enforce or even notice property maintenance and other city codes, the better to enforce state laws, one supposes, though our City Charter demands that the Manager enforce all city codes and does not mention state laws.  Our previous manager, David Frasher, in 2006 set up a Code Enforcement Department of non-sworn officers, soon renamed as “Community Service Officers,” (CSOs) supposedly to enforce city codes, but actually to be the place where property nuisance complaints go to die, while complaints about other code violations like lack of sign permits and fees are enforced. 

When nuisances ripen into safety hazards, CSOs eventually cite and abate the hazard.  But even hazards are not enforced against until they become a big enough hassle to clean up that the responsible party might let the city to do it for profit.  They used to charge a 10% of cost administration fee for hazard abatements; it recently was raised to 20%.  After all, people will clean up a minor nuisance or safety hazard with only a warning from a cop, which makes no money for the city. 

          But the purpose of nuisance codes is to stop safety hazards from developing.  When police won’t do their job of necessary nagging, the responsibility for it falls on private people, “peer pressure,” as Ms. Samson said.  This Litter Cleaner has been applying a subtle kind of peer pressure for the last year, demonstrating cleaning of litter on private and public properties.  It has been too subtle, and subtlety doesn’t work for a protest.  

It’s time to make it blatant, by picketing one property at a time, starting with the most egregious offender, a restaurant that piles empty boxes out front of their store under their overhang, an obvious safety problem.  Let’s see how long it takes them to clean up their exterior with a protester holding a sign for a couple of hours per week and handing out leaflets. 

          (It took about a half-hour, and was not pleasant for anyone involved.  The next target is Walmart, which is the biggest offender, will be tougher, and won’t take it so personally.)

I'm done cleaning on the Miracle Mile

Some businesses, along the blocks of the Miracle Mile that I've been cleaning under the sponsorship of KAJO/KLDR, have been slacking off on their own litter cleaning. This shows that, if you do something for others for free, they will stop doing it themselves.  

Not everyone has done so.  Some have actually improved a bit, namely the Fruitdale Grange, which has lately begun renovating their landscaping, and last week cleaned up the bamboo and maple leaves along the north edge of their lot.  

       Then there is a certain restaurant, which has been so slovenly that I started calling police on them for leaving their boxes piled up within sight of passersby, where they could burn if a firebug took the notion, and attractive nuisance back in the corner of the fence that they share with another property.  Their employees also throw their butts everywhere, including the property next door.

An employee confronted me a while back about calling the cops, when I was shaking my head at their having moved their boxes to the front of their building, under their overhang where they would stay dry, burnable and even more accessible.  She said that the cop had been there 5 times and he said that it was okay to stack boxes if they were broken down and flattened.  I see no such allowance for storing such trash on the ground in our nuisance code.  

What became crystal clear to me on the day before Thanksgiving is that regular weekly cleaning does not work as a protest, even while wearing a tunic sign.  One becomes like Mom cleaning house or a servant.  

It was L'il Pantry who made me call it a day and an end, looking at the trash at one end of their lot.  I had noticed the trash on their lot increasing; this was the most butts I'd seen on this edge yet.  It was obvious that their workers never get to this edge of their lot, and apparently picked up little or nothing between my weekly visits.  

When I first started picking up their lot, I gave them a prize for “no old trash” on their property.  Perhaps the worker who liked to keep things clean had quit and no one has taken up the work, a common problem, which means that their owner does not care.  

I get the best reaction from a neighborhood when I clean an area occasionally rather than regularly.  Once a week is too often; people are willing to wait for it rather than do the work themselves.  It actually sets a bad example, implying that weekly is often enough, when litter cleaning needs to be done at least daily, several times a day at restaurants, bars, and convenience stores.  

So I am done with protest cleaning of any private property, and will end my weekly cleaning under the Caveman Bridge.  The City will continue to depend on me to clean it if I keep doing it.  I may picket that restaurant’s unsafe disorderly conduct and the city over their toleration of it.

I owe KAJO/KLDR for the two months or so left on their year of site sponsorship.  I give them credit for two days of cleaning an event of their choice, a $200 value.  This is a service, not a protest.

Litter is Tagging

A shopping cart in Tussing Park

Litter is tagging in a very basic sense: it marks the territory and builds the preferred habitat of the disorderly. 

Most everyone is disorderly in some way, and we all have our own sense of order as well.  This gardener, due to her own disorderly conduct in defying police, prosecutors and judges in continuing to petition and spread leaflets in our (at that time posted) Public Market, being cited 4 times for Criminal Trespass 2 when once would do, ended up spending two weeks on work crew, and got to clean up abandoned houses and vagrant camps as well as roadsides.  This led to several years of public property litter cleaning and study of litterers, to find out why some people would leave piles of trash around their beds and even sleep on D cell batteries under their beer boxes.

Most people who litter, or who let it lie on their property, don’t purposely mark their territory and themselves as disorderly.  They just are disorderly, and it shows.   They might just be lazy, cheap, rebellious, or just not care about order and cleanliness, but anyone can see that they are disorderly by the litter that they spread or tolerate.  

But some of the most disreputable disorderly among us, vagrants and residents alike, know the power of litter to disgust and repel the orderly and respectable, and use it purposely to claim territory and imply that their place is not a safe place to be.

On public property, vacant land, unmaintained property, and along railroads properties that are not maintained, when one who is orderly comes across a place that is very littered, one becomes nervous and wants to get out of there, even without obvious signs of camping.  Signs of camping make one feel like one is trespassing.  Cleaning up a camp feels like stealing, because it is. 

A camp behind the wastewater treatment plant, beside the river, along the river trail.

Many of the people who build these camps know it, some consciously, most subconsciously. They use litter first to find a place to camp.  Old litter means that no one cares about that spot and it is safe place to leaves stuff one cares about, and to camp.  More litter makes it safer; broken glass is especially repellent to the orderly.

It is necessary evil to clean up camps and litter generally.  It is evil because giving offense is always evil, and the people who built that habitat will be very offended, feeling robbed both of goods and territory.  It is necessary or the disorderly will take over our world, piece by piece.  They claim property by leaving their stuff on it; we must clean it up and reclaim our territory.

We are cleaning up under the Caveman Bridge in Riverside Park.  Disorderly residents, homeless, and vagrants have long claimed that end of the park, hanging out on the steps, littering the ground under and around the Bridge, up to the restrooms that they use.  Please call to find out where and when we are cleaning this week.

Special  issue, published in GPlittercleaner.blogspot.com, free at KAJO/KLDR, 888 Rogue River Highway

Gardening is easy if you do it naturally.  #Litter is #tagging, marking the territory of the disorderly.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener    @AnRycke      541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

A Styrofoam Bombing on the Riverwalk

8/19/14

Saturday, I started seeing little pieces of pinkish Styrofoam outside the Greenwood dog park as soon as I got out of my truck.  This was obviously purposeful marking of territory.  Styrofoam peanuts are generally found only by main roads, randomly, where they blow out of the top of trash trucks because some people don’t bag their trash before putting it in the can. 

I threw balls for my dog, Petey, and then we headed down to the river at the Greenwood Overlook to cool off and relax, picking up little pieces of Styrofoam along the way.  Whole pieces started appearing as we got to the Overlook and I could see that they continued down the trail, but we went down to the river to check it out first.  The dead deer in the water by the bank that I had reported a few days before was gone.  I did find most of a half-rack of Coors Light cans near the climb out, and a towel up the tree-root ladder, where I investigated because of a cigarette package at the base.  I took them back to my truck, not far, before heading further down the trail.

I would normally visit only this spot along the river on a Saturday morning, since I had a group cleanup under the Caveman Bridge at 10:00 and some refreshments and ice to buy first.  But now, I had to check out the extent of the Styrofoam along the trail and police the lower fishing block and camping spot.   I don’t know or care if anyone sleeps there and leaves nothing; I clean up anything that anyone leaves there, including fire pits.

The pieces of Styrofoam became more numerous as I walked down the trail.  I knew I didn’t have time to pick them up along the way, and just picked up some pieces along the way.  I ran into a lady who mentioned that they had been there for about two days, apparently spread right after my last visit.  The timing may not be coincidental.  I mention the Bridge cleanup on my latest leaflet, and someone using the river walk would be familiar with my cleaning patterns.  I’ve only been getting there about twice a week lately.

When I got to the lower fishing spot at the end of Spruce Street, I found nearly another half-rack of cans, this time mixed Coors Light and Pabst.  It seems that the Coors drinker switched to Pabst.  I hear it’s on sale.

The kind of litter, pink Styrofoam, makes me think that the perp is female.  And I can’t help but connect the Styrofoam to the Coors/Pabst drinker; these are light beers with little hop, and I’ve been picking Coors Light cans up by the half-rack for weeks.  But this is sheer speculation in work that lends itself to forensic thinking.

But what is readily apparent is that this littering was neither accidental nor unthinking.  It was purposeful and aimed right at my litter cleaning efforts, probably in retaliation for cleaning up under the Caveman Bridge.  It appears that this person walked along the River Trail toward the Dog Park, tossing Styrofoam, and started to run out too soon to make it to the Dog Park, so she started crumbling the last pieces to make them go farther.

That Saturday, I had to stop cleaning at that point and get to the Bridge.  Sunday was my day of rest.  Monday, I cleaned along the path to the end of the Wastewater Treatment plant fence before leaving for my 10:30 Networking Toastmasters meeting.  I could see that the Styrofoam continued down the trail, and notified my liason with the City that Parks needed to get the rest.

Along the way, picking up Styrofoam near the blackberries at the edge of the river bank, I found another river access that was not obvious from the trail, about half-way between the two known spots behind the Wastewater Treatment Plant, seemingly recently opened with weed whackers, with steps cut in the bank for easier access.  It has two conglomerate shelves that are currently out of the water, and a deep hole in front of the lower one.  Perhaps fishermen cut the steps; it looks to be a great spot, and unreachable otherwise except by boat.  It was also being used by drinkers, with cans and toilet paper in evidence. 

The Styrofoam Bomber thereby showed me an access I didn’t know about and she did.  They often do this with their litter; I follow it and find amazing things.  When one marks territory with litter, it can lead curious people to one’s hideouts.  That top conglomerate shelf is nice and dry and soaks up the heat of the sun during the day for a warm sleeping surface at night.

Tuesday, I postponed Westholm cleaning to see how far the Styrofoam went, walking Petey further down the trail after our ball-throwing and checking the river spots, which were pretty clean.  There was a fisherman and his buddy watching him.  They were telling me how they pick up litter, as I picked up litter around them.  I get this a lot.  Some I know are lying for my benefit.

Of course I found a few pieces where I had already cleaned; it will take weeks to get all the pieces.  As I walked down the trail I hadn’t cleaned yet, I started finding broken pieces again, within a few feet of the trail, while there were whole pieces further out.  This made me think that Parks had sent a lawn mower along the trail to pick up the litter, which may have picked up some, but broke up others, making just as much or more work picking up the pieces.  I reported it to my liason, our Assistant City Manager, David Reeves, leaving a message.

A few minutes later, I called to report my displeasure with having to pick my way through knee-high blackberries and shrubs that had been cut to that height months previously to retrieve a chip bag lying on the weeds, and got to talk to him.  When he made a joke about punji sticks, I told him about the time on Work Crew, out at the Food Bank Farm, when I fell and nearly got killed by a bamboo stalk cut off about 8” high; it cut my forehead, a few inches above my eye.

A while later, I called him and let him know that I’d found Ground Zero of the Styrofoam Bombing, where she had apparently opened the bag and lost a bunch right off the bat.  There was none apparent past that.  At this point, my bucket was pretty full and it would take another half-hour to pick them up one at a time, so I asked him to ask Parks to get the rest, about 100 feet or so east of the foot bridge on the river side of the path, and headed back to my truck. 

 

This makes a third obviously retaliatory incident connected apparently to cleaning under the Caveman Bridge.  The first was dumping a 3-gallon bucket worth of moldy dog manure on the Caveman Bridge, soon after I started cleaning under it a couple weeks in a row.  The second, soon after that, was dumping a baggy full of push pins and other sharp objects in front of my house.  I didn’t get back there for a month or so, but then started the weekly cleanup under the Bridge.  And now one has attacked my home ground, the River Walk.

The litterers and day sleepers in Riverside Park are not vagrants, for the most part; they are residents, unemployed and disorderly, only some of them homeless.  They like to hang out with their friends in that area, and they like their surroundings disorderly.  They really resent it being cleaned up.  They know that disorderly surroundings repel the orderly and respectable and they like it that way.

Cleaning the Fairgrounds frontage: no Carl; no crowd

8/9/14

I got to talk with Carl Wilson on his show on Friday about the campaign for Public Litter Cleaning and the Fairgrounds cleanup, but he said that he had business out of town and wouldn’t be there, though he asked his listeners to show up and help me. 

There had been some talk at the last cleanup, under the Bridge, that it was going to be hot out in front of the Fairgrounds in full sun.  I knew when Carl bowed out that no one was going to show up. 

There was a cooling breeze and I didn’t have to use my mister to wet down my sleeves and hat until noon. But no Carl, no crowd, despite Tom Ray's best efforts to call out some help Saturday morning.  The power of celebrity only works when the celebrity says he'll be there.

The first thing to do was clean the area around my truck, but not the trash pit between the Fairgrounds fence and the Flooring shop retaining wall.  We would have gotten it if anyone else had shown up.

Trash and goat heads (surrounding the butt at the bottom) at the corner of the flooring shop lot.  I cut goat heads on sight, in most places.  They are annuals which need not be pulled; just cut the crown off the root.

The trash pit between the fence and the wall, much of it old and buried.

The second thing to do was to clean the landscaped area around the entrance.  The heck of that area is that one can’t actually see the litter from the road; it is either chopped up by the mower or is between the retaining wall and shrubbery, though there was one cup in the top of the hedge.  There were ties and wire on the fence by people removing signs and balloons (or not, in the case of balloons), but they are not obvious. 

Balloon string and zip ties left in the fence after events.

Sign-hanging wire left on fence.  Cleaned it all off a few months ago.

I was surprised by one piece of trash.  It looked like clothing through the fence, but when I picked it up, it turned out to be the remains of a large balloon:

Still, I got about 10-15 gallons of trash from the hedges, most of a litter bag.  The wind blows it under the fence, but people also know that hedges are a handy place to stash trash.  Hedges that attract trash are forbidden under Portland nuisance code, which is apparently enforced as well as ours--not.  One frequently finds a lot of trash in hedges; the uglier and weedier they are, the more one finds.  Unless they are frequently trimmed and cleaned, they are inherently ugly and attract more ugliness.

Foot traffic in front of the fairgrounds is low in quantity and quality, mostly disorderly types that drop litter, including my leaflets.  I mostly didn’t offer any, unusual for me; I’m usually not picky.  One man who took a leaflet was pushing a shopping cart full of his possessions, heading for Crescent City.  He said that Medford has been taken over by tweakers, and is too violent.  He gave me a dollar right off the bat.  I don't mind taking a dollar from a poor man; his thanks are sincere.

He was once a groundskeeper for a California city, before they fired all their gardeners and hired contractors who don’t care, as most cities did in the 80’s.  City grounds keeping has not recovered from this disaster, and won’t until cities take back the work and do it themselves.  They can’t properly manage their landscaping contractors for building or maintenance, because they have no one among higher staff with knowledge and experience in the work.  I told him that there is a lot of demand for landscaping on the coast, which is why Chet’s garden center is moving to Brookings.

Since I had no one to help me, I knew that I could not do the whole frontage as planned, to the end of the west parking lot.  I decided to do something that would show, and clean detritus from the gutter along the sidewalk on one side of the entrance, creating a “before and after” picture in front: a roadside with grass clippings and straw piled by the wind along with scattered gravel and dirt from traffic, followed by a stretch of cleaned roadside to the flooring shop.  

It’s not a service; it’s a protest.  If I was being paid by the fairgrounds or county, I would not leave a job half-done.  Some glass had been broken in that stretch that had to be cleaned anyways.  Broken glass is something I clean anywhere at any time, stopping my car and turning around to do it if necessary.

I cleaned the litter, but not the detritus, from the north side of the front hedges along the parking lot west of the entrance, inside the fairgrounds. The detritus is thick there, piled by the wind to the west of each blue spruce.  I didn’t get to the north side of the east fence or behind the office at all, except through the fence. 

Detritus along the north side of the south fence and hedge, west of the front entrance.

I ran into a volunteer whom I know on my way back from the bathroom in the Pepsi Building, who takes care of plantings around the Fairgrounds, and wound up showing her the piles of detritus to the west of the entrance.  After she saw the piles, she said she was sorry I had shown her (because she now feels the need to clean them up).  I cried, “I know!  But I had to share my pain!”

I spent an hour or so cleaning the street, left a bit after 2:00 and didn’t go to another cleaning job; I was sore and had an upset stomach that I treated with slippery elm and chamomile tea.

 West frontage, before sweeping

West frontage, Sunday morning.

 East frontage, Sunday morning

Regardless of whether this Indiegogo campaign succeeds as a business, it has raised awareness of litter as a problem that can and must be solved, which is the most that anyone can ask of a protest.  If nothing else, a lot of businesses are posting “Give Your Litter Cleaners Time andTools” and might actually read it.  "#Litter is #tagging" is getting around on Twitter.  And Carl Wilson is telling people,  "Open your eyes and see the litter!" and "Don't let the authorities tell you that nothing can be done about it."

Five and a half half-racks: The Bottle Bill doesn’t work

8/12/14

Before I even pulled up to the farmer’s driveway and turned around to park in front of White Rock (a popular fishing and recreation spot on Lower River Road, across the river from Schroeder boat landing) I saw the boxes of bottles: 5 half-racks and a 6-pack.  Someone had been feeling civic-minded enough to gather their bottles and set them on the side of the road for some desperate person to pick up and feed into machines for $3.80.  Being bottles, no one on a bicycle would be able to carry them, so that desperate person would have to be driving a car.

Instead, I picked them up and stuck them in my truck.  Before I left, I remembered the need for a photo and recreated the scene.  Between those two times, I cleaned the rest of both sides of the road along the site, and then filled several grocery bags with bottles and cans scattered among the rocks and sand, along with a couple 5-gallon buckets of regular trash. 

At home, I ended up filling 2 half-full metal trash cans with the bottles and cans, which filled up our 3 cans devoted to returnables, mostly beer containers.  It is not unusual to find a half-rack stash of cans when cleaning along the river below the wastewater treatment plant; I found one such stash the next day.  Sometimes they are easy to get to.  Other times, I have to reach deep into the blackberries with my grabber to get them all.

I am finding so many that Donnie is starting to wonder if it is worth the time and hassle of hauling them to a store and putting them in the machines.  Obviously, I give them to him because it is not worth the hassle for me.

Before the machines, the bottle bill kind of worked.  Now, it does not work at all for its stated purpose, which is to reduce litter. 

It is not worth the trouble for most people to haul them to the stores and put them in those very annoying machines.  But many people think that it is some kind of charity to leave them on the ground for other people to find.  Some don’t like to put them in trash cans, lest the money be lost.  One time, I found a kitchen trash bag full of cans at the back entrance to Burger King at Fruitdale where they had not been a few minutes earlier.  It seems that someone saw me picking up litter there and decided to be generous with their returnables and save themselves the hassle.

Those who actively look for returnables go rooting through trash cans for them, and they are not necessarily neat about it; they often leave the lids off the cans.  I have to write “Trash only” on my yellow litter bags that the city allows me to leave next to their trash cans in our parks for pickup, because someone was dumping them in the trash cans and searching for returnables, filling the can and making it useless for others.

On the other hand, when I was on Work Crew and was cleaning up the string of camps along the Parkway, we found a pile of quart beer bottles in a camp, along with separate piles of food trash.  These vagrants were apparently stealing or begging for what they needed, and could not be bothered with those heavy bottles for a nickel apiece.

The people who left those boxes of bottles probably gathered the rest of their trash as they generated it, just like their bottles, and took the trash away.  But since they could not be bothered with feeding the bottles into machines in a nasty, stinky room for nickel apiece, they left them for someone else to take away, probably feeling really charitable and civic-minded doing so.

If there was not a Bottle Bill in Oregon, they probably would have taken their bottles with them, and hauled them to the recycler for free.