Solid Waste has soared to astronomical proportions in today’s world. It is the combination of Residential garbage and Industrial garbage (dwarfs Residential garbage). An average American produces 4 pounds of trash a day, of which a majority maybe non-biodegradable. Every year, The United States produces 200 million tons of garbage of which less than one quarter is recycled. Only ten percent of residential wastes are recovered through recycling due to lack of financial backing for recycling operations, the small size of markets for recycled products and toxic chemicals present in recyclable garbage.
Litter is the part of our solid waste that is in an inappropriate place such as a street, stream, playground, beach etc. Litter is everything from a cigarette butt that it carelessly thrown away, chewing gum on the pavement, candy wrappers, fast food packaging, to the ‘gourmet garbage’ such as the dog poop (Katie Kellie – The history and Future of Garbage in America). Most people hardly take the littering problem seriously for various reasons. Some litter because they think it's okay to litter where someone else will clean up, others because of already accumulated litter – litter begets litter (In Defense of Litter – J.H Alexander). Although motorists and pedestrians are most often blamed for the litter problem, they are far from the only culprits. The few hours I have spent cleaning the Eckerd College campus, I have seen a large amount of litter that probably was not intentionally thrown out. The best example being a plethora of Styrofoam nuggets that had surrounded virtually every group of plants and bushes over a large part of the campus. Later, I was told that these nuggets had blown out of a packaging box from an uncovered trash bin. As Judo H. Alexander points out in his article, In Defense of Garbage, over sixty percent of litter originates from five sources due to carelessness on their part: uncovered trucks, loading docks, construction sites, mishandled residential garbage and mishandled commercial waste. From these sources, litter is carried everywhere by wind, air, water, and traffic until it is trapped by a barrier such as a fence, a wall, a curb, bushes and trees, or other such objects. Once trapped, the litter is not only a highly visible public irritant as classified by J. H. Alexander, but also an invitation for irresponsible people to add more.
The problems that arise from litter are endless and far from merely that of just an eyesore. Litter simply does not belong in nature. By littering we are creating an imbalance in nature, by adding litter that has no useful place in the ecosystem. Litter can be detrimental to our own physical health. Broken beer bottles or metal pop tabs that have been thoughtlessly tossed away at beaches, sidewalks or playgrounds can cuts on children. Metallic objects can accumulate rust, and a cut by a rusted object can pose serious health risks. Animals are also the victims of our careless littering, and they do not have the luxury of a doctor to nurse their wounds. Many wounds they suffer on this account can be fatal. Animals also have the tendency to mistake our litter for food, another fatal mistake. Litter cannot be digested and often is trapped in their stomachs and thus the poor animal starves to death. Smaller animals also get trapped in our litter, once again with deadly results. Illegally dumped tires are the breeding grounds for mosquitoes that spread encephalitis and waste piles tend to attract rats, a historical disease carrier. A lot of our litter is not biodegradable and that means that it simply wont go away. Our wonderful science has given us marvelous materials such as plastic, PVC, Styrofoam, Nylon, Rexene, aluminum etc. Unfortunately these durable, cheap, and convenient materials take hundreds of years to biodegrade or they don’t at all. Disposable plates, cups, pens and travel items often find their way into the litter stream, with no way out. That carelessly tossed away plastic Coke bottle can stay in the environment till the end of time, as we know it, if not disposed of properly.
Litter that finds its ways into rivers and oceans is perhaps more deadly than its land counterparts. Marine litter has brought some species of turtles close to extinction. Turtles have been on this planet much longer than we have, and throughout their lifetime they have been accustomed to eating anything they run into on the ocean. Now, what they run into most are the ridiculous amounts of careless human discards, such as pieces of fishing nets, fast food containers, candy bags which they mistake for food. The converging oceanic currents trap more of our litter than food and the species such as the Loggerback turtle face extinction for this reason; our thoughtless litter. Similar is the fate of many other innocent species such as dolphins, seals, whales, and birds that either fatally mistake marine debris for food or get entangled in it. Fish and other marine-life are the staple diet in many coastal countries, and the dwindling levels in marine life is also a major concern for them. We are also affected by marine debris when they jam our boat propellers and damage our fishing nets. Such mishaps translate into a great loss in productivity and income to fishermen during the fishing season.
All of us, in one way or another, pay for the problems caused by our litter, be it land or ocean. Most of the costs are hidden to us, and some cannot be readily identified. Because of the litter problem in parks and beaches, we need park and beach maintenance crews to collect the litter and dispose it. The staff has to be paid, and the collection trucks need fuel and maintenance and the collected litter has to go somewhere, namely a landfill. Landfills, the primary method of our garbage disposal, I believe are a kind of litter themselves. A Landfill can potentially contaminate the soil around it and the underground aquifers – a primary source of our drinking water. Landfills are also expensive and take a lot of space, which usually translates into more deforestation and loss of resources. In the end these costs are passed down to the taxpayers and that in turn gets passed down to the users of these recreational areas in the form of admission charges, parking fees etc. Imagine the money and resources that could be saved with a little forethought on our part. If on a picnic we chose to use regular cutlery and plates and washed them, instead of disposable Styrofoam plates and plastic spoons that are so easily blown away, we would save a great deal of money and resources while at the same time not disturbing the nature around us. Litter costs us millions of dollars every year, and surely we can change that by taking a few extra precautionary and thoughtful steps. More importantly, litter is costing us our environment by disturbing natural balances in plant and animal life. These costs of these imbalances cannot be assessed and it maybe several years before their effects are even known to us.
After illustrating the adverse effects litter has on our environment, I can safely challenge anyone to give me one valid reason as to why we should not immediately stop and correct our litter problem. There is no ready solution to the problem due to its sheer magnitude. Each of us will have to undertake the responsibility of caring for the environment. Environmental stewardship is our only hope to fix these grave problems we have created.
The Effects of Garbage/Litter on the Environment
This was a paper I wrote for a class entitled ‘Litterology’ taught by Prof Kerr, Winter Term 2001. The purpose was to illustrate the problems and consequences of litter on the environment. It took me three days to write this paper, working roughly two hours daily. The resources used were articles that were handed out to us by the Professor in class.
