There are easy and practical things you can do to reduce the likelihood of waste being mismanaged and winding up as litter.

If you take a paper transfer slip for public transit and you find it in your pocket later, leave it there until you can get it into a Blue Box recycling container.

When you pack a lunch to eat away from home, take along a litterbag.  After, take anything leftover home or to the nearest bin.  It’s your stuff.  Pretend it’s your wallet.  You wouldn’t go somewhere and knowingly leave that behind.  Litter prevention is just as valuable.  And littering is against the law.

Say ‘no’ to a merchant’s receipt unless you need it for accounting purposes.  Ditto for ATM receipts.  A lot of this type of paper goes astray.  Leave excess packaging in the store for the vendor to recycle.  Hang onto plastic bags.  They have multiple uses.

When you pack your recycling and refuse containers, pack ‘em tight and right, and clean up accidental spills quickly after collection day.  If curbside trash contents become litter it’s usually because somebody didn’t follow the packing instructions for recycling.  Don’t be too quick to blame the truck driver!

Keep track of your plastic.  It never breaks down, flies with the wind into trees and streams, threatening wildlife populations.  Plastic can be recycled into useful materials, but not if it's in the water killing fish and birds.

If you smoke, change the way you deal with your cigarette ends so that every cigarette butt gets placed in a receptacle.  That may mean walking a block or two with an extinguished cigarette between your fingers.  But you’ve already had it in hand for the last five minutes, what’s a few more seconds?  In the world of littering, tossing or flicking cigarette butts is among the worst things a person can do.  Guys in trucks do this a lot, but pedestrians are no better.  Use an ashtray.  Duh.

If you deliver newspapers, are a publisher or distributor of handbills, make sure those pieces of paper are securely delivered to a location like a mailbox or behind the screen door where they won’t blow around.  Talk to your delivery people and create a reputation for caring about your product litter.

Wrap chewed gum from your mouth in the gum candy wrapper and deposit it in your pocket or litterbag until you can put it in the garbage.  Never on the sidewalks or under picnic tables, ple-e-e-e-e-ease!

I'm looking for another word for litter bug.  I never use that term anymore.  Bugs aren't smart.  They fly into windshields, for example.  Litterers, on the other hand, can be extremely intelligent people. It's wrong to put them in the same category as a low-life mosquito or the mindless house fly.  

I prefer "litter pigs".  The pig possesses high intelligence. Its problem is its messiness and sloth. And, fyi, a pig will eat bacon.  I learned this by feeding and observing pigs at an outdoor education center as a child. The pig offers far better grounds for comparison to the person who litters. Reminds me of litterers, the cannibals of the environment. 

While you'll never convince a pig not to roll in the mud, you can make it awfully difficult for the creature to do so through training or a change in the environment.  The same goes for litter pigs, the four out of ten people who say they litter. Most can be taught to control their littering habit. They just have to stop acting like pigs, and I mean no disrespect to the pig.

If you see the words 'litter pigs' in a future post, you'll know who I'm talking about.