I recently took a road trip to British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, and was heartened by the clean roadways throughout the country and cities. Today, I drove along Highway 14 to downtown Vancouver and saw more trash and litter than I saw driving several hundred miles in Canada. Look around; you should be sickened. What can we do to clean up our roadways and community?
We need to improve our respect for the environment, and this includes our roadways. The Canadians have turnouts along the roads with trash bins to dispose of trash. Besides bins along the roadways, we also need to carry a bag for trash in our vehicles, and begin talking about respect from preschool to high school, and indicate that it is not OK to trash and litter our roads. Talk about the problem on television and radio. Shame those found littering and have them “do time” on our roadways picking up trash. Design a special vest, maybe striped pink and chartreuse, to be worn by offenders while picking up litter along our highways. If this does not improve our litter problem, fine offenders big.
Our litter-filled community should bother everyone. Demand and require action.
