Yesterday, I set out to do a little toodling around the backroads and take a few pictures. I slapped Bernie Coveney’s Whispering Pines CD into the player and drove down Red Hollow Road to see what I could see. The weather was turning out to be much better than had been predicted and I was in good spirits. I found some great photo ops and began mentally composing another puff piece about the beauty of Wythe County one can find off the beaten path. I took pictures of an old mill stream, some wonderful derelict buildings, and some beautiful farmscapes. Nice, huh? But, by the time I got home, I was sad and angry.

What was it that ruined what had otherwise been a terrific day?

LITTER.

Waste that is UNLAWFULLY disposed of on our roadsides. And folks, for the most part, it’s not the tourists who are doing this; it is the residents of this county.

Here is a photo I took of a swinging bridge across a creek that runs alongside Crockett’s Crossing, a backroad off a backroad off a backroad. Crockett’s Crossing is a narrow, gravel road barely wide enough for a single car to travel. For the last mile or so, there are no houses.

Directly across from this charming scene I found this:

It’s a little hard to tell from this picture, but the items you see include a glass jar, a plastic water bottle, an aluminum can, and a fast food carton. There were other items around that I could not include in the frame: a cardboard beer carton, beer bottles, a plastic bag, and more fastfood containers. Here are a few statistics for you to ponder on types of litter and how long they stay in our environment:

Cigarette Butts 1-5 years
Aluminum Cans 80-100 years
Orange Peels Up to 2 years
Plastic Bags 10-20 years
Tin Cans 50 years
Wool Socks 1-5 years
Glass Bottles 1,000,000 years
Styrofoam Undetermined
Plastic Bottles FOREVER

Francis McAndrews in his widely used textbook, Environmental Psychology, states that the most prolific litter offenders include women, youth, men under 25, rural dwellers, hunters, fishermen, truck drivers, and construction workers. I include myself in this list. I am a smoker. Until about six months ago, I thought nothing of tossing a cigarette butt out the window, but no more. My cigarette butts now stay where they belong–in the ashtray. Outside the car, I knock the fire off when I’m finished and put the butt either in a trash receptacle or my pocket. I have never thrown other trash out the window and never will.

Litter is not just unsightly, it causes real problems. A lot of litter in this area, particularly styrofoam, eventually ends up in our waterways, killing fish and wildlife who injest it thinking it is food. Paper cups and plastic bottles retain water that serves as a breeding ground for disease-causing mosquitoes. Piles of trash attract rodents. Litter begets litter. If we throw our trash along the roadside, it tells tourists and others passing thru our county that we don’t give a damn, so why should they? It is a fact that some businesses take into consideration the amount of litter in an area before deciding wheter to locate there. People who don’t care enough to keep up the place where they live, will not care enough to make good employees.

We live in a time when most of us feel that the majority of the problems we face as a society are beyond our control. Gas prices, global warming, a crashing economy, growing unemployment – these are all things that we as individuals feel powerless to control. But litter is a growing problem we can do something about.

It’s very simple. To begin with, make this pledge:

I WILL NOT LITTER, NOR WILL I ALLOW THOSE UNDER MY INFLUENCE TO LITTER.

In the weeks and months to come as I become more knowledgeable on the subject, I will have more to say. In the meantime, please let me hear from you. I welcome your opinions and suggestions.