We Need Biodegradable Packing
By Albert B. Kelly
Come to any City Council meeting and you will no doubt hear someone express their frustration with the amount of trash and litter throughout streets. Whether it’s coming from a member of Council or a resident, it is an ongoing and chronic complaint and it’s a fair one. In the absence of anything else, some assume we’re not enforcing the codes. This assumption is not true; our codes are being enforced with consistency.
I know this both because of the weekly calls I get from people who have received summons’ or notices as well as through checking the number of summons’ and notices issued during any given week or month. In some instances an offender will pay their fine while others end up in court and then it’s even money as to whether they’ll show up for their day in court.
Then again, with an emphasis on bail reform and everything surrounding it, there is a reluctance to issue bench warrants for “no shows” and instead there may be trials in abstentia. Whether such trials have the desired result is debatable because if they didn’t show up for court, it is doubtful they’ll pay the fine imposed. With that, we’re left with trying other measures to combat litter and trash.
In addition to enforcement, we routinely have our Public Works personnel working along-side the street sweeper moving up and down streets ahead of the street sweeper to blow and rake trash into the gutter so that it can be swept up and removed. These efforts have been effective, yet go up and down that same street 48 hours later and you might have a hard time believing that it received such attention.
Beyond these daily and weekly efforts, the City spearheads semi-annual community clean-up days when upwards 200 people, whether individually or with a volunteer organization, tackle the highways and byways of our community collecting hundreds of bags of trash and recyclable materials. Again, these efforts help, but only partly.
When it comes to trash and litter, some have shared their thought that the problem is merely a symptom of a larger thing, namely poverty and whatever else attaches to low-moderate income communities. I understand the theory, what I don’t get is why people can’t put their trash and litter in a garbage container. This doesn’t require any special training, nor does require a certain income above median- it simply requires people to place their trash and litter into a garbage can.
I could go on about “pride of ownership” as if that magically compelled someone to throw away their trash in the proper receptacle. I could also go on at length about various socio-economic reasons and how certain people feel unheard, marginalized, and disconnected from the American Dream or the middle class or whatever else might pass for a reason why people litter and refuse to pick-up it up.
Such justifying is at best disrespectful to the many residents who do take pride in their homes and neighborhoods and who take the time to pick up goodness knows how much trash from others. At worst, it’s dishonest because it ignores the fact that some people are simply lazy, lacking in dignity and common decency. Setting aside the deep dive on why we’re up to our backsides in litter, we could use a little help from the fast food chains.
I say that because a good deal of the trash and litter consists of cups, bags, and wrappers from MacDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC, and 7-11 to name a few. Given the money these companies make in our communities and the price we pay in clogged arteries and diabetes, they could at least step up and provide some manpower or resources to help clean up. These national and international chains might also consider investing in the research needed to create truly biodegradable packaging and wrappers.
We’re starting to lean in the right direction on single-use
plastic bags, now we have to push the issue with these companies when it comes
to the packaging that holds their burgers, fries, sodas, tacos, and mcmuffins. By
focusing on the packaging perhaps the litter, much of which comes from their
products, might actually breakdown and disappear in an environmentally friendly
way after a relatively brief period of time rather than being something
archeologists of the future will pick over millennia from now in search of
evidence that we were once here and allegedly civilized.