Back in the 1970s, if my memory is up to the task, there was a nationwide advertising campaign that featured an owl exhorting the message “Give a hoot, don’t pollute.” The owl was named Woodsy.
There was also a series of adverts featuring a Native American crying about the way Americans were polluting the land.
Of course today we have the very strongly-worded messages on our McDonald’s waste: “Please dispose of properly.” Who could ignore such a threat from the Hamburgler? Certainly not this fast-food junkie.
For most of my life I didn’t give litter much thought. I came from a family that more or less picked up after itself. When I was a rotten kid it didn’t occur to me to toss my Quarter Pounder foam box out the car window.
Litter as a scourge on society didn’t occupy many of my brain cycles until a little more than a decade ago when I moved from my native Michigan to Norfolk, Virginia. I moved to the steamy swamp of Virginia for a job. A great job, mind you, but up until this past February when I moved to the mountains of Utah, the state of Virginia and I never became close, personal friends. I disapproved of the weather in Virginia (I still do, in fact). But one of the first things I noticed back in the winter of 1999 while in Norfolk for the job interview was the litter. Trash. Everywhere.
Norfolk is purported to be the largest naval port in the world. It sits on the Chesapeake Bay. Ocean. Wildlife everywhere (even though much of it is creepy, crawling, bitey and stingy). And along with all of that nature-ness was paper, trash, bottles, cans and plastic bags. Along the roadways. In the culverts. Blowing across fields. Ankle-deep in parking lots. It was such a contrast from Michigan that it really made an impression.
During my time in Virginia it never improved. I can’t say it got any worse, but it didn’t get better. I talked about this state of affairs with a good friend of mine who was a military veteran (I was one of three non-vets within a 100-mile radius of said Navy base — I am convinced that they let me live out of pity). He had spent much of his military time in Germany, known the world over for public parks that sport picnic tables that are clean enough for light surgery. Certainly the German culture (Germany being where my people originate) is one of control, order and “rightness”, so perhaps it’s simply in the water. But my friend noted that his vision of litter and pollution was perhaps tempered by years in Germany because every place he went compared poorly to his experience of German order and cleanliness. How could it not? Those Germans are some fine people. And they know some amazing things to do with cabbage and sausage.
But back to Virginia. Or, rather, let’s get the hell out of Virginia, which is what I did a few months ago. I am now in Provo, Utah. I am at the base of the Wasatch mountains. It’s a desert climate. It’s mountainous. It’s a dry heat as I oft-say. But today it struck me, while out for a drive, it’s clean. Sure, there’s some litter, but I notice it even more starkly here because it is certainly not common. When I see a Wendy’s bag or a plastic grocery store bag I think “Ooops, someone must have dropped that.” In Virginia I was racking another round into the chamber to deal with the weasel that blatantly tossed their crap into my ecosystem. I’m sure there are weasels here in the mountains, too, but the general state of cleanliness here cuts them a lot of slack from good ole Mr. A.
So what’s the difference? We’re all Americans. We’re all in the melting pot. Perhaps it’s the inherent natural beauty of Utah that makes people think three or four extra times before tossing their crap out the window. But what explains Michigan? Oh, don’t get me wrong, Michigan has its own version of amazing natural beauty, especially the closer you get to Canada.
I think here in Utah the answer is the mountains. They are a visual representation of God looking over everyone’s shoulder. You don’t dare do something too blatant, that mountain’s looking!
In Michigan I think it was bottle laws. A reach you think? Yeah, it is. But in Michigan every consumable “bottle” (Coke, Pepsi, Dew, water, etc.) requires that a deposit of ten cents be paid at time of purchase. Later you return the empty container to the store and you get your dime back. So even if Dudley Dufus tosses his empty bottle of sugar water out the window, some 12-year-old boy is going to come along on his bicycle with visions of getting rich one dime at a time.
I think the general mentality of holding onto those bottles carries over to other waste. People think about their garbage. They’re more likely to hold onto their trash because there might be some money in it.
I’m not advocating that everyone have a bottle law. It’s a huge undertaking. Stores are required to collect the deposit. Stores must accept the dirty, stinky empties. An entire industry has developed to create automated return robots that accept your empty, crush it and give you a receipt good for cash to buy Budweiser on your way out. So it’s expensive for society to do this. (And I’m purposefully ignoring the costs of trucking the empties to some remote villa where they are, if propaganda is to be believed, recycled into artificial heart valves, Cheetos and other fine goods). And who knows, maybe the net result isn’t that great. I imagine that the carbon footprint to create those return-your-empty-here robots is pretty huge. They use electricity. They are broken every other minute. But the green spaces are greener.
The key to keeping our earth all clean and tidy? Grow mountains. Great big snow-capped ones. Do your part — plant a mountain today!
