Litter doesn't diminish on its own. In fact it multiplies like an invasive species. 

Bolton takes the nip-in-bud strategy to environmental offences.  Did you know that the threat of being seen and the embarrassment of being caught are two powerful deterrents to all these unwanted behaviours?  

CCTV cameras?  Too bad they are needed.  With all due respect to privacy purists, this may be one instance where the overarching public good trumps the personal infringement argument.  I will leave it to others to debate this.  All I know is I am heartened every time I see a punctuated response to littering, dog-fouling, graffiti and dumping.  Not a one-off of sloganeering or political posturing and toothless laws, but a well thought out series of linked steps to bring the majority-held standard into effect.

You can read more about Bolton's approach in Crime Reporter Miranda Newey's piece in The Bolton News.

When one tries to push for holistic action on littering, the first instinct of those who could most help is to try to dismiss you as crazy.  While Bolton's bold posture fails to prove I'm not crazy, it sure gives legs to my advocacy for sustained responses to littering here at home. 


 

A couple of bright spots popped into view during my recent observations of litter’s ugly trail.

Heading into Toronto at a slow crawl on the Gardiner Expressway I see the signs, their LED bulbs aglow. These are new.  They read: Keep Toronto roads clean. Don’t litter.

This is an idea I’ve been pushing at MTO, whose main roadside litter guy, Mike, welcomed my advocacy. We will be seeing at long last a dedicated litter message displayed during the summer on new provincial road signs slated for some Ontario highways.  You would think something like that would be easy to orchestrate, a classic no-brainer.  In reality, making alterations to any existing government communications program and its bureaucratic approach feels like trying to break into jail.

Next, I want the transport ministry to mention littering on driver license renewal forms.

Another highlight to note, I see there’s a LiveGreen Toronto subway ad campaign to encourage people to recycle, probably aimed at condo dwellers, whose boards are notoriously slow to get with the environmental times.

On occasion I notice really clean commercial lots around town. What a great calling card it is to see open lawns, decent, well-placed containers, conveying respect and caring! The halo effect seemed to spill to the street and sidewalks, which were amazingly absent of litter for a city like Toronto.

I know everyone says, “Toronto is a clean city”.  If we are, we are a clean city with a very dirty secret. Cast your eyes to the broad landscape and you can’t tell me I’m wrong.
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(June 8, 2014) Had a message from Toronto Ward 6 Councillor Mark Grimes inviting me to speak to a joint Business Improvement Area meeting of 20 or so business owners next Friday. I said I would be delighted.  Litterers pose a particular problem for retailers.  

I’ll be heading to Etobicoke, home of Toronto’s notorious mayor, (who I exposed as a litterer – search keywords: Sheila White Rob Ford littering.)  Fortunately, he’s in drug-and-alcohol rehab right now and can’t do any more damage for a while. 

He’s the human version of the Exxon Valdez. 

I'm using the provincial election in Ontario as an occasion to poll the four political party leaders on what to do about littering.  Elections are vehicles for driving issues onto the public agenda.  I am rather proud of my 10-question survey, formulated around ideas that are floating out there or being tried in other places. Anyone can offer an opinion quickly and easily. Get started here.  Questionnaires are a mainstay of advocacy during election campaign periods, and campaign teams loathe them. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Ontario's first-ever questionnaire on littering doesn't get, forgive the pun, tossed aside.  I will be publishing the results of this experiment in November's second annual report.

May 19, 2014 - Moving our community cleanup day to May from late April made all the difference today. A bright, sunny morning and all the prep work paid off. Our best turnout in years, a rainbow of ages and ethnicities, enthusiastically filling refuse bags and turning our "Everyone Come Clean" event into a real family affair of close to 80 people.  April is too cold for cleanup events now.  Europe evidently agrees. Its Clean Up Europe day was May 10 too. Also today, across town, in Toronto's trendy Annex district, I was a special invited guest of Neil Stephenson's. Neil's the pioneer and organizer extraordinaire of a brilliant and successful, "red carpet" event I first featured last year in my newsletter December 1 (#43).

Neil's "Litter and Glitter" treats its volunteers like movie stars. After working until noon everyone headed back to renowned eatery Splendido on Harbord Street for a gourmet lunch, live jazz band and an amazing array of high-end prizes, all donated. The best part about both of today's events? The feeling I have in an area where people have taken the time to care for it runs through me like a deep breath of fresh air. I live for the day when the joy of beautiful surroundings is a constant and not an exception in our neighbourhoods. 
 
May 5, 2014 - Let me illustrate how serious I am about not littering. 

Seven houses and the width of a roadway separate my home from my mother's.  Between here and there today, I littered accidentally.  (45 per cent of all littering is "accidental".)  

I was carrying a plastic bag filled with dried cranberries.  Maybe I was swinging it around too much in my glee over a spring day that finally bordered on feeling warm. A hole had developed in the bag and, as I neared my destination, out spilled about a half a cup of loose cranberries, some of them not so loose, more like sticky cranberry wads dotting the road surface. I fully intended to clean them up. Before I could get too far, a rumble from down the street told me a vehicle would soon pass.  Oh no! It was an oversized FedEx van that had just driven its full weight over my derelict berries. Now they are flatberries. No, they're jam.  It was funny, oddly ironic, and highly coincidental all at once.

For many the story would have ended here: Food-mess-on-the-road, oh-well. Your litter maven, however, was not about to have the wretched sight of spilled food stay on the road.  It looked conspicuously out of place and uninviting.  I retrieved a metal dustbin from my mother's pantry and a straw whisk. Back to the road and to the scene of my crime, I painstakingly removed every blinkin' berry even though it meant digging most of them up with my thumbnail.  Thankfully we live on a little-travelled city street. I didn't have to worry about traffic, aside from the odd FedEx truck. The appearance of the street when I finished was well worth the few minutes of tidying involved.  

I sprinkled my collected cranberries under some of mom's trees knowing, here on private property, they would be devoured by grateful birds and greedy squirrels. 

The moral of this story is: If you litter, pick it up and be a hero in the natural world.