Another shot at “Trash for Sale”

I’ve made a few adjustments to my video on Justin Gignac, who collects litter from the streets of New York and sells it in Lucite boxes for $50 a pop. Enjoy!

LitterBlog

Try to search for other blogs on litter, and most of what you’ll find will be pet related. Lots of “pick of the litter” and litter box discussion going on out there.

There are a few related to my kind of litter…

Litter Project, a campaign to encourage everyone to pick up one piece of litter a day, tried to start a blog to solicit ideas on how to clean up litter. There was one post with nine related comments in March, and nothing since.

Keetsa, a mattress manufacturer, professes their greenness. Their site features a post on keeping litter in its place, with a video by Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh.

Other blogs may occasionally mention the issue, such as Angie Brennan’s amusing anti-litter ditty set to Poe’s The Raven.

One regular (okay, monthly) blog dedicated totally to litter is at a site dedicated to keeping Knoxville, TN, beautiful. However, these once regular posts stopped coming in May.

Any other good blogs on litter out there? Please send them my way!

And the most common form of litter is…

…cigarette butts. Without a doubt, if one were to collect and itemize the litter on public streets anywhere (outside of Singapore, perhaps), cigarette butts would come in first. They may be small, but what they lack in size they more than make up for in sheer volume.

I have noticed that these are particularly popular in grates along the sidewalk. They get lodged down inside and no simple sweep or rinse will free them. And so they will stay until they eventually disentegrate.

It seems that many, if not most, smokers do not consider throwing these items down littering. I know a few smokers who would never consider dropping a piece of trash in the street, and yet they flick their butts as well as any Humphrey Bogart fan. I asked one of these friends about the issue and he said, “So should I throw them in the trash and start a fire?” Point taken.

Yet, can’t throwing a lit cigarette on the ground also start a fire, if it lands in the right (or wrong, more accurately) place?

I am originally from Southern California, more recently known as the land of a thousand wildfires. This summer, Griffith Park in Los Angeles all but burned to the ground after a lit cigarette was thrown into the dry brush. (Read the story at CNN.com) Many expensive homes were threatened, though none burned. The L.A. Zoo was threatened, with no way to evacuate all of the animals in time. In the end, no one was hurt. But nearly a thousand acres of park space were destroyed and who knows how much money lost on firefighting and recovery efforts. And all because of a tiny piece of “litter.”

It’s never dirty when you want it to be

I’ve been paying attention to litter patterns in my neighborhood, and along the paths I walk to work and to school–which streets and what time of day the most litter can be found.

I took my camera out on a Thursday in the middle of the day in SoHo, hoping to shoot some B-roll of particularly littered corners. Trouble was, I didn’t find any. I could find bits of litter here and there, but not the visual I was looking for.

And so I decided to stake out a stretch of street with no trash can nearby, camera in hand, to catch someone in the act of littering. I was a bit nervous about confronting them (would I be cussed out, or just ignored?). But I knew I needed to hear their explanations and responses.

I waited on that street for about 45 minutes. No one littered. Not even so much as a cigarette butt. I watched several people with trash in their hands walk for a minute or two until they reached the trash can on the corner and responsibly disposed of it.

I felt encouraged after this day (though a bit concerned about getting content for my project). Not as much trash as I thought, not as many litterers as I expected…

I returned my camera to the school, got some dinner, and began my walk home. Suddenly, there was trash everywhere! The corner of 14th St. and First Avenue was covered with dirty copies of that day’s free papers, coffee cups, cigarette butts, flyers for nearby restaurants… And then, as I continued walking down 14th St., a young man dropped his food wrapper on top of the subway grate right before my eyes. Of course, I was without my camera!

I thought it would be so simple to walk out and find the litter and litterers. But now, I have actually started to plot a bit of a timetable with where and when I can find these trashy spots so that next time, I won’t be cameraless!

And so it begins

For the next three months, I will be immersing myself in the trashier side of journalism. No, not celebrity gossip or fashion or even politics, but ACTUAL TRASH as I explore the issue of littering in New York City.

Should littering be a crime, or an individual choice? Is it ruining the city, or is it part of the landscape? Should we give a hoot and never pollute, or just throw our lunch remains at the environmentalist whiners?

There will be editorials and feature stories, photos and podcasts. You’ll meet embarrassed litterers, frustrated store owners and a man who makes his living with garbage art.

Check back soon…