Few activities get more public support than picking up litter from the side of the road. But to mark Earth Day, I’m about to argue that we shouldn’t do it.
Wait – don’t go! Hear me out. This idea has been percolating in my head for a while and coalesced after recalling hours of reminiscing with my late friend, Paul Schilling about this very subject – litter.
Schill would spend two or three days twice a year, once in the springtime and again in the fall, walking three-mile-long Beaver Dam Road to pick up discarded trash thrown from motoring slobs. Each journey, he was reintroduced to Dunkin, Burger King, Mr. Bud, Marlboro Man, Twisted Tea, all those empty booze pints and mini bottles, tobacco juice and urine-filled water bottles, discarded political signs, clothing, and exoskeletons that would fit in his bag. Obviously, it’s great that because of civic-minded volunteers like Schill we got to enjoy a brief reprieve from the multitude of peels, beverage containers and urine bottles when we drive around. I guess it takes a village to raise a clean roadside.
So why do I argue against it? Because it’s an enabling behavior.
The corporations that make the stuff that ends up being discarded have spent a lot of time and money over the decades to convince the world that the mess is our problem, not theirs. The best-known example is the “Crying Indian” public service announcement in which an actor pretending to be Native American tearfully laments our trashy ways, but there are plenty of others.
Those campaigns are largely the doing of Keep America Beautiful, an organization created in the 1950s by manufacturers of metal and glass containers (plastic joined later) who wanted to make sure that nobody expected them to spend any time or money keeping America beautiful. It’s part of a long-running, carefully organized avoidance of responsibility, and every time we do trash-collecting work for free, we are enabling it. Arguably, it’s almost counterproductive.
Back when I mentioned this thought to Schill, he sorta agreed but said he had moved on. I remember him telling me, “The more I pick, the better I feel, and it beats the hell out of working out in a gym.” For him it was a crusade.
Now comes a confession: honestly, I don’t actually think people should stop picking up litter. If nothing else, it’s a great reminder of the effectiveness of community action and a fleeting portrait of how it could and should be, if only for a few days.
– Clark Corson