One trash bag. One nabber. And more bits of trash than anyone could pick up in a lifetime.
In the pantheon of human waste, litter holds an insidious place. Oil and gas are profitable, at least for some. Dumping in the ocean saves time and land, as long as you don’t think about the undersea damage. Air pollution is basically invisible—and what are we gonna do, stop driving?
But there’s just no reason to litter. It’s pure laziness, and it benefits no one. Can’t be bothered to find a receptacle? Toss that bottle out the window. Dropped a candy wrapper on the ground and the wind swept it away? Well, it’s not worth chasing after. And cigarette butts? Isn’t that what the gutter is for? None of it seems like a big deal, until you see a garbage-strewn beach. Or, more disturbing still, the opened stomach of a seabird—and the veritable junk shop stored inside.
Notes & Miscellanea
- A couple of years ago, you joined a roadside cleanup arranged by your kid’s school. This reminded you for Green Up Day, an annual event in Vermont that you assumed was national, until you realized no one outside the Green Mountain State had ever heard of it. You both enjoyed the process so much, invested in a mechanical claw, which your household now knows only as the “Nabber Grabber.” You and your kid love to dig litter out of ditches together, and half the fun is just using the Nabber Grabber to retrieve things.
- You’re not exactly sure how researchers concluded that each American produces 152 pieces of litter each year, and you assume that much of this is accidental (wind, dropping things, raccoons, etc.) But you’re deeply impressed with the 2021 study by Keep America Beautiful, an organization that brilliantly combines environmental stewardship with patriotism. (And, like, why would it ever be otherwise?) They also found that U.S. roadways (and waterways) retain an average of 2,000 pieces of litter per mile.
- Singapore is famous for its cleanliness, and even you are shocked at the $2,000 fine for a single littering offense. The severity of this punishment may be effective, and you imagine the tough-on-crime folks loving that idea. But you also imagine it’s cultural; Singapore is a tiny city-state with six million people crammed into 744 square miles. A clean megalopolis is a happy megalopolis.
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