article stop littering essay

How the History of Littering Should Impact the Solution

LIttering has wreaked havoc on ecosystems all over the world. What do we do now to amend the global problem of chronic waste?

By Emily Folk

A single plastic bottle can take up to 450 years  to degrade.

Today, we know the impact littering has on our environment and human health. With access to the Internet and social media platforms, we witness the havoc pollution has wreaked on ecosystems all over the world. Solving the littering issue can seem like an insurmountable challenge. However, there are ways to amend the global problem of chronic waste, even though it may initially seem overwhelming.

Kids learn the definition of a “litterbug” starting in elementary school and receive regular reminders not to throw trash on the sidewalk. For decades, the conversation around litter points the finger to the consumer—the person throwing trash out their car window or tossing food wrappers in the park. 

When finding a solution to littering, we need to examine its history. Discussions for the past few decades have placed the responsibility of preventing litter on the individual. In actuality,  much of the blame goes to the industries that create waste in the first place. 

Litter isn’t the problem. It is simply a by-product of a convenience-oriented economy. If you look at the history of litter, there remains one constant. Production of trash, including plastic packaging and aluminum cans, has continued to grow. Despite efforts to reduce waste and promote recycling, corporations like Coca-Cola continue to produce plastic pollution at an unsustainable level.

Litter would not exist if it were not for the businesses that created disposable packaging and capitalized off their invention. The primary anti-litter campaign, Keep America Beautiful, was founded by the very companies producing the waste. 

Sustainable solutions to litter involve looking at the role of the packaging and bottling industry. To truly put an end to littering, we need to put more accountability on corporations to reduce the amount of waste they create in the first place.

The Keep America Beautiful Campaign

Keep America Beautiful is perhaps the most well-known anti-litter movement in the United States. Founded in 1953, this organization works to inspire and educate people on improving their communities. Today, it leads initiatives such as the Great American Cleanup and America Recycles Day. 

Volunteer efforts funded by this organization are significant in slowing environmental harm. Annual events take place all across the country. The collective effort results in an impactful reduction in waste pollution in public places and along roadways.

However, most people are unfamiliar with the organization’s origin. When states began responding to the litter problem, the packaging and beverage industry worried the message would undermine their business models. Their profits demanded disposable cans and food packaging. So they founded Keep America Beautiful, which put the litter problem back on the people and out of the hands of corporations.

The packaging industry relied on convincing people they needed to buy more stuff and that these items would undergo a cycle of becoming trash almost immediately. Society had to be trained to dispose of single-use plastic. The bottle and can industry used the power of advertising to convince consumers that the things they were reusing, like glass bottles, were garbage. 

The Recycling Movement

Following the rise of disposable products, advertisers convinced Americans they needed convenience above all else. In the post-World War II era, marketers sold the American society the idea of microwaveable dinners they could consume in front of the TV. These companies also marketed plastic soda bottles that did not require reuse. In the 1970s, consumers became increasingly uncomfortable with the amount of waste sent to landfills. 

In response, Keep America Beautiful founded another organization, the National Center for Resource Recovery. With serious lobbying efforts, this initiative persuaded state legislators to favor recycling over reusing or reducing consumer goods. The Container Corporation of America invented and funded the phrase “reduce, reuse and recycle.”

By creating the recycling movement, corporations extended their influence across all levels of policy development. Most notably, they actively limited policies that would require corporations to take responsibility for their own waste management. Between 1989 and 1994, Keep America Beautiful spent over $14 million in lobbying efforts to limit recycling policies and let consumers bear responsibility.

The recycling movement has a dirty secret, too. For decades, anti-litter advertisements, including Keep America Beautiful’s infamous “Crying Indian” PSA video, have distracted consumers from making a real impact. Today, people are well-aware that recycling doesn’t always work. Corporations benefited from the recycling industry’s inefficiency, setting up recycling initiatives to fail from the beginning. 

Most of the recycling collected by municipalities in the last thirty years has been shipped to China, where it was most often dumped into the ocean or added to landfills with little to no environmental standards. 

Littering Corporations and the Circular Economy

The contemporary equivalent of the first anti-litter campaign is the corporate standard of a circular economy. Circular economies keep products and materials in continuous use, extending their lifetime and reducing the amount of waste generated from the system as a whole. Also referred to as a closed-loop system or cradle-to-cradle, the concept is only successful if it radically changes consumerism on a global scale — instead of making more plastic out of recycled materials. 

If you look at the fashion industry, companies like H&M are making sustainability efforts that drastically overstate their ability to combat pollution. Creating clothes out of recycled materials may sound like a great idea, but if the growth potential remains the same, the impact does not change. 

According to a study conducted by Greenpeace, Coca-Cola generates over  100 billion plastic bottles  annually. A so-called circular economy may devolve into a form of greenwashing that enables unsustainable business models to persist without making real change. There is a real concern that the concept of a circular economy may award companies for their “sustainability” efforts while simultaneously allowing them to continue polluting at the same rate.  

Recently, Coca-Cola has also announced a new initiative, launching their campaign of Coke bottles consisting of plastic from the sea. This concept might seem more optimistic if it were not for the fact that they are largely responsible for the plastic being in the sea in the first place. While the concept of a circular economy is promising, the way companies implement it will ultimately make the most significant impact.

Littering and the Individual  

Modern consumers are demanding transparency. More so than ever before, buyers are supporting companies that engage in sustainable practices. People are increasingly aware that recycling is not a single solution. Lifestyles that advocate for buying less, like minimalism, are becoming mainstream. The solution to the worldwide littering problem is to hold corporations responsible for the waste they create. By advocating for smarter consumption, individuals can make a big difference in how materials become trash.

Buyers are widely knowledgeable of the impacts of waste pollution and are making efforts to ensure waste is handled more sustainably. City-wide green initiatives reduce litter and encourage recycling. Online companies promote the purchasing of secondhand products like clothes. 

Individuals are managing their waste better while also holding the companies that create trash accountable. Organizations like Keep America Beautiful have helped in cleaning up the U.S.’s public places, sidewalks and roadways. Now it is time for them to take responsibility for the waste they generate before it reaches the consumer.

This article was originally published in the Conservation Folks blog on June 19, 2020.

Featured photograph provided by Boyce Duprey .

About the Author

Emily Folk is a sustainability and green tech writer. Her goal is to help people become more informed about the world around them and how they fit into it.

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Reasons, Consequences and Possible Solutions of Littering

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Littering can be defined as making a place or area untidy with rubbish, or incorrectly disposing waste. Littering causes pollution, a major threat to the environment, and has increasingly become a cause for concern in many countries. As human beings are largely responsible for littering, it is important to understand why people litter, as well as how to encourage people not to litter. This paper explores the reasons and consequences of littering and suggests possible solutions based on international experience.

Why do people litter?

Laziness and carelessness have bred a culture of habitual littering. Carelessness has made people throw rubbish anywhere without thinking about the consequences of their actions. Many people do not realize or underestimate the negative impacts of littering on the environment. People believe that their individual actions will not harm society as a whole. As a result, it is common to see people throwing wrappers, cigarette butts and other rubbish in public areas. The majority of people believe that there are others who will clean up after them and consequently, the responsibility of cleaning up litter usually falls on local governments and taxpayers. Thus, the lack of responsibility to look after public places is another problem.

In Georgia, many residents living in urban areas blame the lack of public trash cans for widespread littering in the streets. Several studies have proven a correlation between the presence of litter in a given area and the intentional littering of that particular spot. [1] When a person sees litter accumulated in one place, it gives the impression that it is somehow acceptable to litter there. This, along with the absence of appropriate local waste services, might be one of the main reasons behind illegal dumping in Georgian villages.

Consequences of littering

Litter adversely affects the environment. Littering along the road, on the streets or by the litter bins, toxic materials or chemicals in litter can be blown or washed into rivers, forests, lakes and oceans, and, eventually can pollute waterways, soil or aquatic environments. Based on recent data, 7 billion tons of debris enter the world’s oceans annually and most of it is long-lasting plastic. [2] Litter also reduces air quality due to the smell and toxic/chemical vapor emanating from the trash. A polluted environment can encourage the spread of diseases. Toxic chemicals and disease-causing microorganisms in the trash may also contaminate water systems and spread water-borne diseases which can negatively affect the health of both animals and humans if unclean or untreated water is consumed.

Cigarette butts take a grand total of ten years to decompose because of cellulose acetate, contrary to the common perception that cigarette butts decompose very quickly in only a matter of days. [3] In reality, cigarette butts are a serious threat to the environment, as they contain toxic substances like arsenic which can contaminate soil and water.

Plastic litter is another threat to the environment and its inhabitants. It has often been mistaken for food by both land and marine wildlife. When consumed by animals, they reduce the stomach capacity since they cannot be digested. In the long-term it affects the animals’ eating habits, eventually killing the animals. Much of marine wildlife including birds, whales, dolphins and turtles have been found dead with plastic and cigarettes found in their stomachs. [4] An estimated 100,000 sea mammals are killed by plastic litter every year. [5] Some of the materials may also be poisonous or contain sharp objects therefore damaging the animal’s vital organs or severely injuring them. Another negative aspect of littering is that it is too expensive for a country, society and individuals. Cleaning up litter requires a huge amount of money that is financed by taxpayers that could be used in more productive ways. Littered places are visually displeasing and they depreciate the aesthetic and real value of the surrounding environments. Places with large amounts of litter are often characterized with homes and property that are less valuable as a result. Similarly, it affects tourism as it makes city areas and roadsides look disgusting and tourists tend to avoid staying and even visiting areas that are littered. Furthermore, littering can lead to car accidents. Some trash in the road is enough to create a dangerous situation that could result in serious injuries or death.

The ideal way to handle the problem of littering is for each member of society to take responsibility and try their best to properly dispose waste. If citizens are required not to litter, appropriate conditions must be provided by local governments. Measures must be taken by appropriate local authorities to ensure more garbage bins are installed in various areas for effective garbage disposal. Installing enough garbage bins in town centers, walking routes, public areas, and near bus stops as well as fast-food restaurants offer convenience in disposing and collecting litter. To avoid additional problems due to overfilling, the bins must be emptied regularly.

Unfortunately, the existence of garbage bins do not guarantee that waste will not be dropped in the streets. Enforcing strict litter laws will encourage people not to litter in private and public places. Such laws work towards prohibiting illegal dumping and littering.

According to research conducted by the 2011 Keep Britain Tidy campaign, attitudes concerning enforcement are greatly shaped by the degree to which an individual sees it as a threat and many do not think it is likely they will be fined for environmental offences. The same research also reports that people who have seen or heard about fixed penalty notices being issued are less likely to litter. [6]

Littering penalties and other enforcement measures are common practices worldwide. For instance, the penalty for the first case of littering consists of fines from $100 to $1000 and at least eight hours of community service litter cleanup in California. For subsequent offenses, fines and the duration of required community service increases. In Louisiana, intentional littering can result in a one-year suspension of your driver’s license or imprisonment for up to 30 days in addition to standard fines and community service. [7] According to the Code of Waste Management, adapted in 2015, penalties for dropping municipal waste in the street varies from 80 to 150 GEL in Georgia. The Department of Environmental Supervision, Ministry of Internal Affairs and the local self-governments are the responsible institutions responsible for executing the law and violators are fined systematically by the appropriate institution. However, authorities cannot fine someone unless they actually see them litter and it is impossible to control every street.

Undoubtedly, penalties have a real effect on littering behavior, but education and raising awareness is crucial in guaranteeing long-term results. Community clean up events can be an effective way for spreading anti-litter messages in society. The issue can also be incorporated in bulletin boards, TV programs, social media platforms, and newsletters in a more intensive way in order to spread the message widely. Furthermore, an  anti-littering sign might be placed in highly littered areas such as the streets near public transport stations. These signs serve to constantly remind people that littering is a bad thing that should be avoided.

Some people argue that not only penalties but rewards also might be a good idea. People “caught” doing the right thing may be given rewards like shopping vouchers and their positive disposal behavior publicized in the media or social networks to encourage others to dispose of litter properly. [8]

[1] What is Littering? Conserve Energy Future. Rachel Oliver.

[2] Walking Green: Ten Harmful Effects of Litter, Green Eco Services, Cathy, 2008.

[3] Twenty Astonishing Facts About Littering, Conserve Energy Future, Rinkesh, 2018.

[4] What is Littering? Conserve Energy Future, Rinkesh.

[5] Walking Green: Ten Harmful Effects of Litter, Green Eco Services, Cathy, 2008.

[6] The Effectiveness of Enforcement on Behavior Change, Keep Britain Tidy, 2011.

[7] States with Littering Penalties, National Conference of State Legislatures, 2014.

[8] Why do People Litter? Litterology, Karen Spehr and Rob Curnow, 2015.

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