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writingfulfillment · 6 years

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Millennials: The Generation That Can End Litter

Whether you live in a highly populated city, average suburbia, or you live in a cave in the mountains, you still have to deal with litter. Whether it was dropped there this morning or has spent years on the wind or tide, it’s there now. Making things ugly and endangering animal and plant life. The question at hand is not, “Is littering bad?”, because everyone knows the answer. But if this concept is so universally accepted, then why is litter such an issue? It’s less about people seeing themselves as litters or not, and more about every time someone leaves trash on the ground. It could be accidental, intentional, or a thoughtless act. Regardless, a mess has been made by humanity and we need to clean it up. But it is not enough to just pick up the litter that we see, we need to try and stop the behavior in it’s tracks.

I believe that the people who are best suited to addressing the issue of littering behavior are Millennials. Ingraining the severity of the consequences of littering into the rising generation is the key to preventing littering behavior in the future. We are the people who are both old enough and young enough to make a significant difference in the littering epidemic. By the end of 2018, all of us can vote, and be able to hold sway in legal decisions. Millennials will soon be the largest voting block in America, that is, if all of us actually vote. That could be up to 35% of the population, that is a significant weight for such a young group of people to hold. Most Millennials likely don’t realize how much affect we can have in elections. As this younger generation rises, and gains voting rights, many of us remain tethered to the views of our youth. If we make an effort to have anti-littering become one of those views, not only will it affect the amount of trash on the ground, but the legislation that develops for this issue.

The key to the prevention of littering behavior is spreading awareness. What better way to quickly efficiently get information across to a large demographic than through Social Media? In the past 20 years, so much of life has become somehow involved with the internet. There are many benefits and downsides to having such a powerful tool at our fingertips. But the way that a tool is distinguished as good or bad is based upon how it is used. “It is our choices, Harry, that show us what we truly are, much more than our abilities.” -Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore (Rowling 333) If we use our Social Media platforms to help progress the awareness of littering, then we are using this great tool for good. (And Dumbledore would 100% be against littering. So, if that doesn’t motivate you, I don’t know what will.)

Regardless of who put the litter there, it still remains in our environment. Even if we could brainwash everyone to never litter again, much of the damage has already been done. (Not that it cannot be undone.) It will take a great deal of effort to reduce the amount of trash on the earth. It is not as simple as telling people not to litter, or picking it up and putting it away. Because most plastics aren’t things that have a place in the environment. It has to do with reusing and recycling, and putting more thought into products made and purchased. Single-use plastics are some of the highest littered things found in nature. Litter hasn’t always such a big issue, it is mostly a recent development. Because prior to the invention of plastic, most things weren’t very harmful to leave in the environment. Plants are mostly affected by the chemicals in trash, especially the non-biodegradable sort. Animals usually face the most danger from mistaking the garbage for food and ingesting it. The kinds of things that were littered 200 years ago weren’t the kinds of things that animals would typically try to eat and contained minimal chemicals. The story is very different now, almost all litter is exactly the kind that will be detrimental to the environment.

There isn’t really anyone who is pro-littering, people mostly just don’t understand how bad it really is. People who do, or do not, litter cannot be easily differentiated. In Litterology:Understanding Littering and the Secrets to Clean Public Places, a collection of research on littering behaviors in Australia over the course of 18 years, Spher says, “People’s disposal behavior appeared to be complex and dependent of many factors. It was influenced with how they interacted with the stuff that they wanted to discard, where they were and even who they were with. ...People weren’t simply ‘litterers’ or ‘bin users’ because as we’ve said, the same person might perform both actions more or less at the same time.” (4) Most sources that I could find agree that most people aren’t really one or the other, they’re kind of both. Only zealots could claim to belong entirely to one party or another. (And even then…)

Because a lot of littering behavior is based on the psychological and subconscious situations that we’re in, the way that it is viewed has a huge impact on the future likelihood of more littering. In changing how littering is viewed socially, we can change, and eventually stop, littering behavior. People tend to care what others think of them, even if they are only strangers. If the social status on littering changes from, ‘Nobody really cares that much.’ to, ‘Hey, man, don’t ‘effing litter.’, it will change the habits of people who litter. It is likely that people also feel more welcome to litter in already soiled environments. By shifting the general views, they might not feel like it’s okay to litter, regardless of the circumstances. (Because it isn’t.)

And to be honest, Millennials are more likely to successfully change our own, as well as others, perspectives. Younger people tend to be more open minded when it comes to changing opinions and views. If you look at what the average values were 20 years ago, chances are, they are pretty different from today. We are already changing the script for what is and isn’t acceptable. The condition of our environment needs to become one of our priorities in gradually making the world a better place. Unfortunately, a decent amount of Millennials litter. Even if we only manage to change our own behavior, if will make a significant difference.

I am sad to report that 30% of Millennials also smoke. The number one item that is littered is cigarette butts. They pose a huge problem for both plants and animals as they have a lot of chemicals and are often consumed. In Thank You for Littering: Blowing Smoke for a Cleaner Planet Now, Garton explores the reasons behind this, “Hurry, self-absorption, laziness, (the convenience of just throwing the butts on the ground), arrogance? What is their reason? No one else is littering cigarette butts but smokers! We know it’s you! Stop it! (Written with sarcasm and a smile.)” (22) But she does not do it to blame smokers, but to help them find the reason to stop littering their butts. In the introduction of the book she clearly states, “Smokers have taken a big hit for years now. This books is not another attack against smokers by any means. … This is not a research book. This is an answer book.” (15)

Obviously the butts come from smokers, but that does not mean that all smokers litter or hate the environment. People usually throw trash on the ground in passing for convenience, cigarettes are simply something that is frequently used outside. However, this is not an excuse, they remain very toxic to the environment. Approximately 4 billion cigarette butts are littered each year, so, I imagine that a fair few of those come from Millennials. But fighting over who put what were will not solve the litter epidemic. Spher points out, “But there are lessons to be learned in avoiding the stereotypes and assumptions involved in the littering ‘blame game’. After all, no matter how hard we try to think about a ‘littering behaviour’ instead of a ‘littering person’, when we see litter on the ground, we know that someone must have put it there. And it certainly wasn’t ‘us’!” (12)

Litter comes from everywhere and everyone. Although, there are certainly areas in which there is significantly less trash than others. This is because the initial cleanliness of an environment has a big effect on the behavioral side of littering. In all of the sources I’ve read, people tend to litter less in well-kept areas. If the street already has garbage in it, then people feel more comfortable to add theirs to the pile. It is largely a psychological matter, which is very interesting. Because if the problem lies in the subconscious reasons why we litter, then the answer lies there as well.

Working on understanding and improving the psychological reasons behind littering has the best chance of reducing the behavior in the future. Preventing the current and future amount of littering behavior, especially through the internet, is essential to our survival. There isn’t another earth for us to move to when we’ve killed this one. This has to be the generation where crap hits the fan and we decide to make a change. Not only for the sake of our local communities and the quality of our lives, but for the future. For the people who might live in a very different world from us, just 30 years in the future. This is an issue that is piling up and will not go away unless we work on it. For along time now, people have kind of ignored the amount of garbage they make. We simply cannot let that stand any further. This is our home, and we want it to be beautiful and to last. This will not happen on it’s own, it will require lots of work, but I believe that it will be worth it.

#millennials #littering #makethechange #savetheearth #workforabetterfuture

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