Arizona highway blue bags are filled by anti litter volunteers

Sedona AZ (May 14, 2013) – In a Letter to Folksville USA Point Man Gary Chamberlain and the SedonaEye.com, Keep Sedona Beautiful litter lifter volunteer and Sedona resident Lynn Terry shares his background and an observation that present attitudes toward civic responsibility contribute to local, regional and national litter problems:

Gary:

I’ve had a note on my desk about getting back to you ever since we talked a month ago or so and I apologize for not doing so sooner. I’m not sure how this will help you, but here goes.

I grew up during the 1940s and ’50s in Chicago, which at the time was the second largest city in the country and one of the biggest industrial cities in the world. My blue-collar family lived in the northwest corner of the city in an area known as Norwood Park. It was a middle class neighborhood and my brother and I attended Chicago Public schools and grew up in a couple of nearby Chicago parks, one of which was located adjacent to our high school. I can assure you that back then it would have been very difficult to find any litter around Taft High School or anywhere in the park for that matter. People took great pride in their homes and their neighborhood and the young people took pride in their schools. It was a very different attitude back then regarding personal responsibility. For example, a higher percentage of the adult population smoked in the ’40s and ’50s than does now, but people did not throw their cigarette butts on the ground as they do now.

Our entire neighborhood was full of neatly maintained stand alone bungalows, a few scattered apartment buildings and a number of two flats. The Northwestern Railroad tracks ran right thru the heart of Norwood, transporting white-collar workers from their suburban homes to their downtown jobs. Located along those tracks were a number of small manufacturing facilities and other businesses, all of which created waste. Yet the entire area was pretty much spotless and litter free, which is one of the primary reasons that my experience with litter in California, especially in San Francisco where I lived for many years, as well as here in Arizona, where we have lived for the last eight years, motivated me to become a volunteer litter picker. As we have previously discussed, I have responsibility for several routes with KSB. The two most important of them are along both sides of 89A from the airport road down to the round-a-bout and Upper Red Rock Road from 89A down just past the high school. I never expected to see so much litter along the highways of this beautiful state, let alone find it in such quantities in such a gorgeous community as Sedona.

AZ highway litter

I would certainly be the first to admit that my childhood experience in Chicago came before the avalanche of fast-food restaurants and disposable consumer items altered our culture. (I never ate in a restaurant until high school and then only at Orsi’s Pizza, a Taft hangout.) However, it seems to me that the primary difference in the two eras is that people’s attitude about their responsibility towards their community, which for many does not include ensuring that litter is placed in garbage cans not on the ground. At least to my standards, the numbers of fast food containers, plastic bags, etc. that I can pick up on one of my routes at any given time is disgraceful and don’t even get me started about the hundreds and hundreds of cigarette butts I find.

Beyond the litter that I deal with locally, I am greatly saddened by the litter of all kinds that is strewn along the highways that surround Sedona and the Verde Valley. Highway 17, which we travel on frequently because we have a condo in the Phoenix area we stay at a few days a month, reminds me of what I encountered in my Third World travels years ago. As I told you, I have been heartened over the last three years by what I found in other states during fall 5,000 mile driving trips that my wife and I have taken. We found that highways in states such as Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Iowa, Minnesota and others in the midwest, east and upper south were very clean and neat.

I’m not exactly sure what this says about people in the southwest and in California, but it does convince me that it’s not an across the board American problem. Maybe there is hope yet. Well, that’s about all I have to say on the subject for now. I will continue my volunteer litter pickup work for as long as I’m able, but will leave the efforts to change people’s mindsets to you and others who can deal with that role.

For the best free Arizona News and Views? Subscribe to www.SedonaEye.com today.