How would you solve the litter problem?

For so much trash as may be grasped, it’s Monday Mail.

Shakespeare

Today’s opening is from “Julius Caesar.”

Trash

This column is just trash, in that it’s about last week’s column about trash, and the inescapable fact that we can’t clean up all the trash if people keep throwing down more trash.

Here’s an email:

Tim,

The solution to the littering issue is simple: Eliminate disposable containers and we eliminate litter. If people cannot be responsible enough to dispose of disposable cups, wrappers, bags, etc., then they should not be allowed to have them at all! The human race existed quite well for many millennia bringing their food home without wrappers, preparing the meals at home and consuming them there, and never needed a fast-food bag or wrapper to assist in the process….

I think that, to start with, fast food franchises should be limited in the amount of potential litter they can hand out, just put the burgers and fries loose in the bag unwrapped, no more wrapper-around-the-burger-inside-the-box, one napkin per person, no straws (drink from the rim of the cup), and no individual condiment packages….

I heard that last year the litter we picked up from the streets of Columbus was roughly 900,000 pounds, down from 1 million pounds the year before. This tells me that the fast food joints are using packaging that's 10 percent lighter than the year before. You and I both know it wasn't 10 percent less littering. Or it was just 10 percent less picking up done by the city, the rest left for this year….

David.

Dear David:

You mean I’m supposed to eat the Whopper straight out of the bag? While I’m driving?

Pasta Elephantidae

Last Monday’s column noted an impending Chattahoochee RiverWarden cleanup at an island off River Bend Park in Cusseta.

On Saturday, 22 volunteers gathered 1,200 pounds of trash sorted for recycling and bagged for Chattahoochee County Public Works to collect.

“We had great conversations about litter, storm drains, over-dependence on plastics and our disposable culture,” reports RiverWarden Henry Jackson, who sent this email about community cleanups:

Good morning Tim,

Thank you for drawing attention to the issue of trash being improperly disposed of in our community and others. You are correct, of course, in saying that we can never pick up all of the trash.

However, it is not the trash removed from the river that is important. It is the act of removing it.

It is easy to get caught up in how much trash is removed. I love to be able to tell donors, members, and the community how many pounds of trash we collect from the river in one year. It shows we’re working, putting dollars to good use, and effecting positive change.

Now that I’m giving it hard thought though, I’ve spent the last year presenting an incomplete message. It’s not that trash is removed that is important. What’s important is that we’re removing it, together, as a community.

Our citizenry has no idea how much damage is being done by our trash because they do not have the opportunity to see it firsthand.

Trash cleanups aren’t about how much trash is removed or how much returns the next day. Community trash cleanups are about giving people an opportunity to see firsthand the damage that has been done to the few wild places we have left in this world….

You eat an elephant one bite at a time. You solve our trash problem by putting people in front of it, one person at a time.

Respectfully,

Henry Jackson.

Dear Henry:

I’m going to have to disagree with you on that last part.

I’m against eating elephants. Elephants have it hard enough, what with hunters killing them for game trophies and tusks and all.

This story was originally published February 11, 2018 at 3:56 PM with the headline "How would you solve the litter problem?."