Don’t Squash the Litterbug

Tom Laughlin

Have you ever seen someone just drop a piece of litter in front of you? Have you ever missed the trash can when practicing your three-pointers? As an onlooker of either of these events, it’s hard not to cringe at seeing another piece of refuge join its nomadic relatives found in public parks, along interstates or in just about any public venue you can imagine.

We’ve grown up under constant pressure to pick up after ourselves and recycle at every opportunity we get. But, why is it that, even after the wide-spread campaigns and community service efforts of your local penal institution, we can still find litter in any public area?

Consider first the definition of the word ‘litter’. Litter is often defined as waste that is unlawfully disposed of on public lands. This might seem like subtle matter to most people, but litter is different than trash, because it can only exist in the public domain. Although trash in its various forms does exist in private establishments; it is not considered litter. When you leave a messy plate and crumpled napkins at a table in a restaurant, you haven’t littered. Likewise, in the pristine, sterile laboratories of a microchip manufacturer, hair or oil from skin left behind isn’t considered litter either.

After all, these are all examples of types of waste, so what’s the difference? The difference is that in these private sector examples, the demands of consumers regulate the health of the environment. In a laboratory or hospital where sterility is next to godliness, waste will contribute to product malfunctions or a patient may become infected. Either case is detrimental to the bottom line of the establishment for obvious reasons. In fact, the owner of a trashed restaurant, a grimy ER room or a dusty lab will soon find himself in bankruptcy and removed from
inconveniencing or harming anyone at all. Fundamentally, the profit motive is a direct incentive to keep trash, even trash at a microscopic level, clear of earning the ire of a population.

The fact of the matter is that people, for sake of their flawed humanity, will inevitably continue to leave garbage, trash, skin cells and other refuge wherever and whenever they choose. The private sector will make due with this unsavory revelation in accordance with what is tolerable to all of us consumers.

In the end, we do still have the problem of litter existing in public places. If not for the charitable nature of volunteers and others, we would likely find our roadways, water and parks covered in litter. So what should we do about this perpetual problem? Enacting new bureaucracies or enacting new laws to try to counter human nature seems less than enticing, as well as ineffective. If we really care about the environment and if we are tired of seeing it littered and polluted, then we should shift stewardship and ownership of public lands to the people who will best take care of it: private land owners.