Attack on Litter

Of all the environmental problems that plague the U.S., litter has perhaps the lowest priority. But even when trash is out of mind, it is never really out of sight. Paper cups, tin cans, plastic wrappers, aluminum flip-tops and glass bottles are the detritus of profligacy, defiling the national landscape. The American penchant for littering is costly as well as unsightly; picking up the rubbish costs an estimated $1 billion per year. But the mess can be cleaned up, as Washington and Oregon are showing in different ways. One state uses the carrot, the other the stick. Both have been successful.

Oregon opted for the tough approach and is concentrating on clearing away the empty beverage containers that account for up to 75% of the volume of roadside litter. The effort began in 1971 when the state legislature banned pop-top cans and no-deposit, no-return bottles. Oregonians now must pay a 2-c- to 5-c- deposit on containers. The idea was to create an incentive for returning empties or, if they were thrown out anyway, to turn one person's heed less discard into another's petty cash.

What makes the law work, however, is the simple fact that the vast majority of the state's residents really want to clean up their landscape, even if it means toting empties back to retail outlets. Result: the volume of bottles and cans in roadside litter has dropped by as much as 92% in the past three years.

That statistic brings no pleasure to the soft drink, beer and container industries. The banned flip-top cans are by far the most popular of beverage containers. Indeed, they seem to have a direct role in boosting consumption; since this type of can was introduced in 1959, per capita consumption of soft drinks and beer has risen by 33%. Industry spokesmen claim that Oregon's law not only threatens the growth of their business but also hikes costs. The sturdy returnable bottles that the law requires are twice as expensive as thin-walled "oneway" containers. And the empties must be shipped to bottlers (at a cost of 3.5c, each) for refilling.

Clean Up Drive. Instead of concentrating only on containers, Washington's residents ratified a "Model Litter Control Act" in 1972. It was designed to stop all littering through education and citizen participation programs. An especially created Department of Ecology has organized drives to clean up beaches, cities, rivers and mountaintops. To prepare Spokane for Expo '74, for example, 78,000 residents took part in a three-phase litter pickup project that collected 500 tons of trash. The basic theme is pounded home by posters demanding ZERO LITTER, bumper stickers reading LITTER is NO ACCIDENT and even T shirts urging Washingtonians to STOP THE LITTER CRITTER.

Washington's law also imposes fines of up to $250 for littering. Owners of cars and boats caught without litterbags in their vehicles must pay a $10 fine. Such fines help pay for Washington's program. But the bulk of the funds--$650,000 this year--comes from a .015% tax levied against the gross sales of industries that contribute to litter: bottlers, newspaper publishers, paper manufacturers, supermarket chains. The industries do not object. F.N. ("Mac") McCowan, executive secretary of Washington's Food Dealers Association, explains their docility with a nervous reference to Oregon: "Our law is the best alternative to the mandatory bottle return."

The law also works. In checks along 30 one-mile-long sections of roads in July 1973, the Washington state highways department picked up an average of 1,080 items of litter per mile. Now it is gathering only about 100 items per mile--a reduction of more than 90%.

Other states anxious to halt the spread of litter are clearly impressed. California, for instance, may well pass its own law next year. As the legislation is now shaping up, the state will bor row more heavily from Washington than Oregon (but will nonetheless ban pull-tabs on cans as a safety hazard). Though industry opposition is expected, a state-sponsored study strongly suggests that most Californians--and probably most other Americans as well--are ready to accept curbs on the throw-away habit that blights the land.

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