Litter often gets no respect. How encouraging it was to see Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson bring littering to the forefront in his state of the city address last week. Contrast this to Toronto’s mayor --  you know, the guy observed by police to have littered a public park with juice cartons and a liquor bottle, the guy soon to be known as the mayor formerly known as Rob Ford.

Jim Watson, who ushered in an interesting bin experiment on central Elgin Street this year, expresses fatigue over the sight of litter and poor recycling habits. (The two are interlinked.)  In his speech he called on compatriots to improve their recycling practices and pledged more bins and innovation to reduce the rate of littering.

Watson, in my view, proves that no mayor who litters should be mayor.  Real leadership starts with who we are at the core.  A person with littering at his core travels an anti-social path of behaviours that could escalate, according to experts who study anti-social crimes and make a link between littering and other forms of deviance.

Two high profile cases of late – one being Mr. Ford’s, and the other, the metamorphosis of Justin Bieber, who has grown from spewing his spit mucous over an upscale Toronto hotel balcony earlier this year to egging houses, public street racing and impairment in the past few months.

For Ford, on the other hand, his “gateway crime” of littering is an indicator of his love of underbelly associations with fellow crack cocaine users and dealers and his unyielding passion for alcoholic beverages, including whilst driving.

If you litter your city, you can’t be the face for clean-ups.  You don’t belong in the staged photo-ops, where you put down your work gloves as soon as the cameras leave.  You can’t speak intelligently about littering because, clearly, you don’t get it if you are wanton with your discarded waste.  You can’t be trusted as a lawmaker. 

Littering is the lowest rung on a long ladder of criminality.  Ottawa’s Jim Watson understands this and will focus his attention on it, he says.  By contrast, Ford stumbles along blindly, carelessly littering beautiful Toronto as he goes, stupefied.

Gob-smacked! That’s what you’d say about a giddy, star-struck fan. Now the term has a whole new meaning thanks to tortured teen idol Justin Bieber. 

If you happen to be underneath a hotel balcony where Biebs is staying, gob-smacked could mean you just might end up with his yellowed mucous landing on your head. His now-infamous spitting episode the latest in a long line of seeming etiquette gaffes the young singer seems to be having trouble with his meteoric star status.  Spitting from balconies, a bubbling froth of Justin Bieber’s saliva spilling over captured in media for all to, um, what - drool over? 

I tweeted @justinbieber to make the point that spitting is littering.  I told him I need celebrities to work with me, not against me, on litter prevention. Celebrities like Taylor Swift, Michael Sheen in Wales and top model Laura Wells in Australia speak out against littering. The latter two are front-and-centre in their respective national campaigns. Thanks to TMZ we have a forever-image of the singer from Thursday in Toronto - one we would prefer to forget.

Spitting is one in a brotherhood of anti-social behaviors that includes public littering, urinating, graffiti and vandalism.  There are laws against spitting all over the world.  Spitting is a leading cause of spreading  tuberculosis. Countries like India and China are planning to crack down hard.

Lately it’s as though some LA marketing bad boy gave the Biebs a handbook on how to spoil his image to increase his popularity with guys. I would rather think that his out-of-control actions are of the scripted variety rather than conclude that the kid is coming unglued.

Bieber is heading into the dicey 18-35 male demographic that is prone to disrespecting public space.  Litterers leave behind a costly problem, not just gob.

I want to see Justin Bieber promise to not spit and to make the connection between his galactic status and the peer group his actions influence.  Come to think of it, he would be a perfect ambassador for litter prevention around the world.

I wonder if he’ll answer my tweet?

They came from all over the Greater Toronto Area to celebrate Earth Hour.  Youth and elders, babies and rambunctious toddlers, they arrived in great numbers to show that Chinese Canadians support the environment.

If you want to get a job done, I would recommend none better than the organizers of the hour of darkness that drew so many participants from far and wide.  They could have stayed home and flicked off a few switches – the easy way to join the 152 countries of the world that mark the Hour on March 23.  But they didn’t do that.

Jenny Zhang is an incredible woman who seems to be able to conjure up crowds with little effort when, in fact, as any organizer knows, it takes months of work to plan.  Even then, a robust crowd is never assured.

The Chinese Canadians for the Environment (CCEA) committee and its youth contingent, “Green Ambassadors”, worked for two months to assemble this night’s hive of attendees for their Earth Hour Concert ‘Unplugged’.

Alex and I arrived to warm greetings and smiles.  Jane Xu, editor of greenlifeweekly.com, welcomes us at the door.  She is typical of the professional people who volunteer with CCEA to make an environmental difference.

At 8:30-ish, they dim the lights to a Cantonese countdown after tiny, single blue and red LED lights had been distributed into all waiting hands.

As the room went dark, a gasp, a thrill, one moment of awe as the coloured lights punctuate the near blackness save for the glow of our faintly lit stage.

The concert programme features a variety of Chinese performers, modern and traditional instruments and styles and is peppered with the talents of young people.   We’re up next. With the aid of a translator our act is explained and introduced.  The moment of truth – is this big Chinese crowd ready to have fun singing about not littering?

There was a palpable elevation of spirits and a total connection with the spectators: curiosity and delight. Yes, they were involved. Yes, they were enlivened.  And while English may not be their first language, or may not be spoken at all, they are happy, they participate and they understand and appreciate.

Apart from ‘gong hay fat choy’, I know two words of Chinese lingo – ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’.

There’s something uniquely special about the power of song and its ability to communicate messages.  Nothing was lost in translation.

Two studies whose geographic origins couldn’t be further apart have converged in the past week to validate the work we, and others, are doing to change behaviours through environmental education (EE).

In Britain, a survey for the country’s environmental youth trust, funded by Barclay LivingLand, showed that although nine out of ten parents tell their kids not to litter almost five in ten children have witnessed their moms or dads littering.  Fewer than half the parents explained to children that littering harms the environment.  Practice what you preach certainly applies here.  The UK Daily Mail trumpets the headline: "Parents accused over litter".

Coincidentally, meanwhile, in the middle of the Indian Ocean on Mahé Island in the Republic of Seychelles, researchers from Imperial College London discovered another telling find. 

Their study of EE and how it influences behaviour at home gives quantitative evidence to suggest that children, who receive EE, do influence their parents’ environmental attitudes and behaviours, even when they’re not trying to.

IOP Publishing released the findings Feb. 13 Environmental Research Letters in a paper by Peter Damerell, who headed the Department of Life Sciences team. Among their observations are that EE begun early will likely last forever, and unenlightened behaviours are not impossible to turn around either.  
The entire abstract is available HERE.

Taken together these studies help cement what we keep stressing about litter awareness. They explain why our program’s blend of music, kids, litter education and model behaviours becomes a lasting partnership that is transferrable across generations. 

I take this new evidence to heart.  It validates what we’re doing at the Litter Prevention Program.  It proves there is science behind what we are doing and that young people truly are the levers of behavioral change who can turn us to a time when nobody litters, wouldn’t even think of it.

The other day at my bank someone left a half-fill cup of coffee in a takeout cup on the ledge outside.  A few days ago at the supermarket, I was two freshly spewed pieces of chewing gum coagulating on the pavement.  It's rare to see it so fresh.  Usually it has mutated into a black tar circle that never goes away. Or it winds up on your shoe.  

Not a day goes by that I don't notice litter.  So I started this website and a program to teach people not to litter.  My goal for litterpreventionprogram.com is for it to be the "go to" site for information on littering around the world.  Litter problems and solutions, contests, innovations, campaigns, crackdowns, videos, photos, the continued tracking of this worldwide conundrum, the site is a ready-made resource for students, teachers, researchers and the public as well as a diary of this wasteful, trash-filled era.. 

The problem of littering has confounded human beings since the dawn of packaged goods.
How fortunate was I to stumble on a method that actually changes littering behaviors and attitudes!  It stands to reason that music and engagement are involved, as these elements are known to be effective motivators.  

Research shows that people who litter will only walk twelve steps with stuff in their hand before they litter it.  That's not only lazy, it's crazy! It's sad but true that in this age of over-packaging, some people seem addicted to throwing waste out the car window and leaving refuse behind. 

The Litter Prevention Program replaces bad habits with good habits and make people proud to be litter captains in their home, school, community and workplace.  Ahhhh - to feel good again.  Studies say that people who litter feel bad, that is, litterers have low self-esteem, which manifests itself in this particular anti-social behavior.  It's hard to believe, but they will feel better when they give up littering.