We live in a throwaway society. Once in a while, a news report shows a photo of the debris left on the ground when a gathering of the public has ended. It takes a small army to clean up the mess made by careless folks who couldn’t be bothered to use one of the many garbage cans scattered around.
Every day at lunchtime, fast-food restaurants hand out a lot of paper and foam containers to the line of autos in the drive thru line. Some of those items are eventually tossed out a car window. Many people tote a disposable plastic bottle of water in an effort to drink more. Some are dropped along the way.
This isn’t just an urban problem. While I was Durand Township clerk, highway commissioner Kim Steward complained that used tires and bags of refuse would be dumped along rural roads.
Areas use various methods to clean up the junk. Some of those picking up clutter in our nation may be offenders who have been sentenced to community service as alternative punishment intended to benefit the community that’s been harmed by their crimes.
In my home state of Illinois, more than 10,000 volunteers partner with the Department of Transportation through the Adopt-A-Highway program to clean a two-mile section of highway at least four times per year.
In California, our most populist state, Governor Gavin Newsom plans to spend $1.1 billion over the next three years to clean trash and graffiti from highways, roads and other public spaces in an effort to beautify the state. Newson estimates the program will create up to 11,000 jobs. Priority for employment will be given to at risk youth and people who were formerly homeless or formerly incarcerated. This is not a pot of gold that Newsom has found at the end of the rainbow, but citizens’ hard-earned tax dollars. Can you imagine what that amount of money could provide if it wasn’t being spent to clean up the state?
How can we keep our communities neat without spending a pile of tax-payer dollars?