Whose Job Is It...

To clean up trash that we, or others produce? Everyone's, of course. Rebuilding Place has a post focusing on litter and the diffculties in getting people to pick the stuff up. Clean-ups can be great, even if they sometimes seem like a band-aid (and the sort of are, because the goal is to prevent the trash from getting their in the first place). Having a neighborhood clean-up (on your street or in alley) can be a good way to get to know neighbors. And if you do it long enough it can have a real impact (plus, it isn't a bad way to start off a Saturday, or Sunday morning solo now that the weather is warming up). Richard, and the piece he quotes, discuss the all too frequent indifference to littering (or trashing our environment in other ways), and the negative connotations that picking up trash has for some people. I know I've been asked, when doing organized clean-ups where I was part of a group, both if the cleaning up was court ordered, and how much I was getting paid to pick up the trash. Of course, most people get what you are doing, and many are appreciative, with the occasional person joining the effort, or donating gloves (I've seen passing contractors stop to do this).
Quite a while back a local listserv (I forget if it was the H Street one or 6A) had a bit of a discussion over what would be an effective campaign to change people's behavior. It's hard to do, and it probably needs to come from different angles. As a kid I was outside a lot and it was constantly reinforced to me how harmful littering and pollution more generally could be to the environment. So as an adult, I'm not only careful to recycle (and always puzzled and shocked when I realize that someone I know refuses to), but I also keep a compost pile (which I know some people can't do for various reasons), and I am planning to get a rain barrel. So starting early is big step up, but it's really hard to get the message to stick with the kid if he goes home and sees Mom and Dad throwing trash on the ground, illegally dumping oil, or just not recycling (and some parents are not so fond of hearing their 9 year old tell them what they should be doing).

Roll Call: Reducing Litter on H Street

Here is a Roll Call (subscription required) piece on efforts to reduce litter on H Street. Anwar Saleem and Alan Kimber were interviewed. By the way, links from DCist, the Express, and general interest in the criminal events of the past 48 hours resulted in over 1000 individual users visiting this site yesterday.

ANC6C05: Stop Litter Campaign

Commissioner Alan Kimber has posted his proposal for an anti-littering campaign he thinks could help the neighborhood (especially H Street). Check out his concept here.