This morning as I was walking the dog, I picked up a discarded McDonald’s bag from my neighbor’s lawn. As I carried it to the trash can, it hit me: whatever happened to litter?
Is there less of it, or are we just using the word less? ((Obviously, the third option is that neither one has declined, and it’s all my subjective experience. But a poll of my co-workers (Matt) suggests this isn’t the case.))
I grew up in the 1970s, and remember Woodsy Owl’s warnings to “Give a hoot, don’t pollute.” I remember my Cub Scout troop handing out plastic litter bags to hang over your car’s stick shift. I remember [that crying Indian commercial](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4ozVMxzNAA).
Litter, and in particular the act of littering, was a cultural meme.
But I don’t see anything like that now. Did recycling replace it? Is there just less random trash, and thus less need to call attention to it?
I wonder if the anti-littering campaigns of the 1970s were successful enough that behavior genuinely changed, thus making litter less common. In 2011, if you saw someone throwing a plastic cup out the window of a moving vehicle, you’d think “asshole,” wouldn’t you?
But was that true in the 1950s or 60s? We could interview our parents, but asking people to report on their behavior a half-century ago feels unreliable.
Since we don’t have time machines, maybe the closest we can come is developing countries. From my limited experience in Africa and South America, I’ll say I definitely noticed more random trash blowing around, and no particular urgency in cleaning it up. Some of that has to be attributed to limited government services; if you don’t have regular trash collection, you’re going to have more garbage lying around.
But I also suspect there is a virtuous cycle that happens once you start noticing and removing litter: you’re less tolerant of it, and the people who generate it.