The simplest of solutions

Have you ever found yourself not noticing something until you actually looked for it?  As a volunteer for “Love Cedar Valley Day” that took place just this past weekend, I discovered how this very situation applied to me.  With gloves and trash bag in hand, I was able to help clean up Cedar Falls by picking up trash along Dry Run Creek with other volunteers that were a part of my group.  In doing so, I realized that it wasn’t until I set out to look for trash that I noticed how much of it there really was.

Despite all that I saw, it would still be reasonable to ask this question:  is littering really that big of a problem?  Actually, the answer is yes.  According to the website of the nationwide program Keep America Beautiful, “Over 51 billion pieces of litter land on U.S. roadways each year.”  After conducting the 2009 National Visible Litter Survey and Litter Cost Study, it was found that since most of these pieces measure no longer than four inches, a total of 6,729 items are littered per mile.

The facts, however, do not stop there, as disadvantages result when the practice becomes too much of a problem in a community.  Keep Iowa Beautiful, an organization that stemmed from Keep America Beautiful, conveys that “Iowa schools spend over $3,336,000 every year on litter cleanup.” Amazingly, this is only part of the $11.5 billion the entire country spends for cleanup yearly, as explained by Keep America Beautiful’s website.  Obviously, if there was less litter to worry about in the first place, this amount of money could be used for alternative expenses.  Other disadvantages also exist, including the devaluation of property by as much as 7 percent (KAB) and a possible drop in community reputation simply due to poor aesthetics.

While 15 percent of litter results from environmental factors, keepamericabeautiful.com states that “about 85 percent of littering is the result of individual attitudes.”  This statistic clearly proves that our choices are directly linked to the nation’s problem of litter.  Knowing it is our responsibility to take care of our environment, what is it that’s keeping us from doing so?
   
Having recently celebrated Earth Day as a university, we were able to promote environmental friendliness and encourage daily decision-making that aligns with such principles.  Though I think it’s cool to have a day to value such things, why should we have any other mentality for every other day of the year?  If we truly want to respect the things of nature and use our resources wisely, we should be seeking to implement such earth-friendly decisions in our daily lives, so much so that they become habits we don’t even think about.

Even though my group and I actually had a pretty fun time picking up trash for the Cedar Valley last Saturday, it did take both time and work to do all we did—more than it would have taken if people had thrown away their garbage in the first place.  Despite the fact that to me, it seems like a no-brainer to throw away trash, there are still people who simply don’t do it.  For someone who has the potential to do the opposite, I encourage you to be the one who doesn’t leave a candy wrapper on a picnic table or spit gum on the ground.  For something as simple as discarding our trash, littering shouldn’t even cross our minds.  Bottom line:  find a trash can and throw your garbage away, because when you look around, they really aren’t that hard to find.