Sunday, June 29, 2014

Litter

One of my biggest complaints about living in LA is the litter. I've never been anywhere other than Mexican border towns with worse litter. Many times I've seen both adults and kids just drop something on the ground when they are done with it. I really don't understand why it is so hard to just carry it with you until you get home or somewhere with a trash can.

We've got a dead-zone outside our apartments that always has litter. It is a sidewalk in between the street and a very tall retaining wall for the apartment complex higher on the hill. The apartment complex on the hill doesn't maintain it because it is not part of access for their residents. Our apartments don't maintain it because it is past their property.

After bemoaning it's trashy state for a year and a half, I finally did a little citizen participation and cleaned it up myself. It took 15 minutes and really wasn't that bad in terms of what the trash was although it filled a large trash bag. 80% of it was disposable food containers and primarily drink containers. A surprising number of them were Starbucks cups. Seriously, if you can afford expensive coffee, you ought to know better. Clearly that isn't from the homeless people.

I will be interested to see how long it stays clean. I've heard/read somewhere that a clean area attracts less trash (can't find a reference). We'll have to see if it proves true in this case.

For more on LA's trash blight:
http://la.streetsblog.org/2014/06/20/i-see-london-i-see-france-i-see-l-a-s-dirty-underpasses/
http://la.streetsblog.org/2014/06/25/dead-spaces-make-for-dead-and-unwalkable-places/
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/28/local/la-me-pico-union-trash-20131029

1 comment:

  1. Yeah, I've read that somewhere, too (that the clean areas tend to have less litter in them because it has to do with mentalities - it's much easier to be like, "oh look, someone else has already done this, so it must be okay." than it is to be like, "Imma just going to throw this on the ground because I'm lazy.")

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