The city’s newest addition to the anti-litter brigade

The city’s newest addition to the litter patrol is a Street Condition Observation Unit, or SCOUT. (Not sure where the “T” comes in…)

SCOUT is made up of 15 staffers in three-wheeled scooters who will visit every city street each month, recording and reporting on litter, illegal dumping and overflowing litter baskets, along with fallen trees, damaged bus stops, potholes, etc. The SCOUT patrol cannot issue violations, but they are equipped with GPS devices to send the locations of trouble areas to the Department of Sanitation. The new unit has begun to make its rounds, and is supposed to be in full swing by the end of the year.

$1 million dollar trash

This week, a story emerged about a woman who found a painting by the garbage on the sidewalk. Turns out, four years later and after some investigation, the painting was stolen, wanted by the FBI, and may sell at a Sotheby’s auction for up to $1 million.

Residents fined for litter on sidewalk

A new bit of legislation has recently passed (and is awaiting full implementation) that adjusts the times when the Department of Sanitation can fine residents for litter on their property or on the sidewalk in front of their property. Before this law was suggested, anyone could be fined from $50 to $250 between the hours of 8 and 9 a.m. and noon and 1 p.m. if there was any litter at all up to 18 inches from the curb of the sidewalk in front of their home. Residents finally complained loud enough about the fact they could dutifully clean their sidewalk before leaving for work in the morning and come home after a long day to find that passersby had used the sidewalk in front of their home as a trash can, explaining that very few people come home and have time to check their sidewalks during their lunch hour (or half-hour, as is commonly the case).

Apparently, there were two laws in consideration. One included a warning for a first offense. This one did not pass.

What did pass is an ammendment that says the DSNY can only fine residents between the hours of 8 and 9 a.m. and 7 and 8 p.m. Perhaps this will put a dent in the more than $16 million the city is reported to have collected by fining residents in 2006.

Does litter have to be ugly?

In my research, I came across a post by Karen Kingston titled “Litter in Bali.” In it, she discusses how the native people in Bali do not see litter as something disgusting to be concerned about. Instead, she says, “for the Balinese, who are much more etherically based, they see litter as pleasing to the eye, adding colour and variety of texture. Blissfully uneducated to the health risks of litter, they happily live with it, considering it an enhancement of the environment rather than an eyesore.”

While the sweeping assumption concerns me a bit, the idea here is intriguing. Does litter have to be ugly? Why does it bother us to see a black, paved street “decorated” with a bright red plastic cup? And can (or should) we change our outlook so that litter is pretty?

Of course, I cannot forget the environmental concerns behind litter. But this shift in attitude can make the dirtiness of New York’s streets a bit easier to bear.

Adopt a trash can?

It’s become pretty clear during my litter observations that much of the trash that ends up on the streets is because the trash cans runneth over.

The Department of Sanitation has obviously noticed the same thing, because their website includes an option where New Yorkers can adopt a trash can to prevent such spillage. It’s all very sterile, with the trash cans are referred to as “litter baskets” and trash bags as “liners.”

An adoptees’ responsibilites are to “change the liners when the basket is three quarters full and place the full securely tied liners next to the basket for collection.” In exchange, the site says, “The Department supplies plastic bag liners, a collection schedule and a contact person at the Department’s local district operations office.”

I thought Angelina was a good Samaritan for her adoptions, but anyone who voluntarily handles public trash for the purely altruistic reason of keeping the streets clean surely deserves an award of some kind!

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!

Trash in a trash can can be a crime…

In mid-August, the New York City Council passed a bill to quadruple the fines for dumping personal garbage into public trash cans. For repeat offenders, it could cost you as much as $400 to leave your Chinese takeout containers in the bin on the corner. (Read the amNY article.)

The reasoning, according to supporters of the bill, is that much of the city’s litter doesn’t come from people dropping trash as they walk down the streets, but from trash that overflows from full bins and blows where it will. After a few weeks of paying attention to trash cans and litter in the city, I’ll vouch for that. I’ve watched people carefully place their empty coffee cups on top of overflowing bins, only to watch it blow out a few minutes later and roll across the street.

But the bill raises (at least) two questions of concern: how will they identify offenders, and why don’t they simply place more trash bins around the city?

Beyond seeing New Yorkers drop their trash bags in public bins firsthand, as the amNY article explains, sanitation workers are free to dig through bags of trash left in public containers to look for identifying materials, such as mail. Is this an invasion of privacy? What if everyone just shreds their mail?

As for the second question, the city argues that the existing bins are emptied daily and that they shouldn’t be filled in 24 hours just by “legal litter.” Also, if someone thinks a corner needs another trash bin, they can request one on the city’s website. What else can be done to keep space in the public bins?

Give a hoot and stomp out the litter campaigns

Last year, the NYC Mayor’s Fund sponsored a now-defunct anti-litter campaign they called “Stomp the Litter.” It featured the cast of the Broadway show Stomp pushing brooms rhythmically throughout the city. Ironically, throughout the entire 60 seconds of watching them sweep around Central Park, Staten Island and the Bronx Zoo in the promotional video (still available for your viewing pleasure at www.nyc.gov/html/fund/html/projects/stompoutlitter.shtml), I never actually saw them pick up a single piece of trash. I also did not see any improvement in the cleanliness of New York streets in the months following the launch of this campaign.

And so the city has resorted to scare tactics.

Last week, I was riding the 7 train in from Queens (why I was there is a story for another blog entirely). There was an “MTA Subtalk” sign beside the door with “flame”-red writing that read, “ Litter gets on the tracks and catches fire, and that causes train delays…a little litter goes a long way.” Still, with the threat of fire AND train delays, the trash remains.

And so I am left wandering, do anti-litter campaigns actually inspire anyone to stop littering?

I remember one time, when I was 5 or 6 years old, and Woodsy the Owl had just visited my kindergarten class. I was outside the supermarket with my mom and I watched someone drop a piece of trash on the street. Shocked at what I had seen, I immediately stepped in front of the offender and dutifully quoted what I learned in school that day: “Give a hoot, don’t pollute!”

Luckily, since I was quite cute in my younger days, the “polluter” turned red only from embarrassment and quickly picked up their trash. (I have a feeling that, at 26, as I get set to confront some litterers on the streets of New York, I may get quite a different response.)

Woodsy worked. Of course, I was an impressionable kid.

Perhaps anti-litter campaigns should take place only at elementary schools. Dora, the Anti-litter Explorer? Soak up litter with Sponge Bob? Better suggestions…?