Scotland has a chance to break free of Britain today.  As Scots trot to the referendum polling booths history is being written, regardless of the outcome of the Independence vote.

You have to love the Scots for robustness.  A referendum in Ontario on a new voting system in 2007 had so many strings attached that campaigns on both sides never really took off.  In Scotland you have vibrant “Yes” and “No” camps involved in spirited intellectual sparring, shiny signs and big rallies.

Their civic engagement thermometer is at its zenith and we could all learn from the 97% registration rate and projected voter turnout of above 80 per cent.

Something else strikes me about this referendum.  Scotland is heady in the afterglow of July’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow followed by the prestigious Ryder Cup.  Patriotism is high and exhilaratingly vehement: unbridled pride and enthusiasm. It shows.

When you look at footage of tonight’s historic Independence referendum, notice how clean the streets are in the background.

Try to find litter on the landscape.  It will be scarce.  That’s because this proud, feisty, little country embraced a national anti-litter program as a serious goal.  Towards A Litter-Free Scotland is a laudable effort by government to reduce the amount and rate of littering.  Education, fines – a one-two punch. To this distant observer, the strategy appears to be working.

But we’ll see if the losing side leaves any of its leaflets and placards on the ground tonight.

Would you give up your drive-thru cup of coffee to avoid another ice storm or flood? Mayor Hazel McCallion is right on the bean with her suggestion that car idling bylaws start being enforced at drive-thru restaurant lanes.

In her parting year, the 93-year-old mayor of Mississauga, Ontario wanted to stir things up and have folks wake up and smell the coffee. If you must order from your driver’s seat, do it in three minutes, or turn off the ignition while you wait beyond the legal limit for idling. 

All this mass run-on at drive-throughs, not to mention at banks and driving schools, is a bad olive in the atmospheric cocktail. Our fumes fuel climate change, simple as that. We contribute more than enough exhaust in traffic jams and general travel. Why can’t people change in even a small way and give the drive-through a bypass? Some people exit their car but leave it running for extended periods on a smog day so a passenger can have air conditioning - I’ve seen that happen in my bank parking lot.

Hazel has hit on an important issue. Canada could ban drive-throughs outright and I would be happy. Unfortunately politicians come up against the wall of behavioral intransigence - a public unwilling to change its behavior, a public that believes the drive-through culture is normal and cherishes it like a human right. Never mind that there’s an obesity epidemic. A walk to the counter, we could all use the exercise.

The US report this week painted climate change as a clear and present danger. We are beings who would choke out our oxygen and propel climate disasters all for a hot coffee in a non-recyclable cup.

Clean air and climate stability, or a double-double to go? I think the choice is clear.

Hazel was right to zero in on bourgeois idling. She hinted at dishing out a $150 fine to idling drivers at drive-through line-ups. Too bad she was only joking.

Now, idling drivers, regarding those littered coffee cups and take-out bags . . . 

Your editorial (April 24) about cleanups missed an opportunity to educate people about littering.  As so often happens Earth Day’s focus is on the marvelous volunteers who tidy other people’s messes.  I was pleased to see a letter on litter in The Scarborough Mirror recently, but was disappointed that your editorial and your paper in general do not give the litter problem its due.  Cleanups are like food banks.  With each, we need to solve the core problem to eliminate their necessity. 

We generally see very little emphasis on changing the behaviour of littering, an act, which, besides being against the law, is anti-social and disrespectful to the environment we all share. 

Littering is a costly and vile act that I don’t want to see society tolerate.  Most people do not litter. For many it is a pet peeve.

Fifty-five per cent of all littering is deliberate.  The remainder is a result of poor housekeeping and carelessness – people who pack their bins to overflowing and are sloppy with their recycling procedures, truckers who don’t secure their cargo, newspaper and flyer delivery people who hurl instead of tuck or wrap, companies and property owners that fail to keep their frontages clean. 

There is much to discuss when it comes to litter and littering, how it harms wildlife, lowers property values, turns off tourism, ratchets down quality of life, breeds crime, drains tax dollars, leaves the environment poorer. 

Scarborough is home to the internationally recognized website www.litterpreventionprogram.com and a fun and effective educational program dedicated to reducing the overall rate of littering.  You have to talk conversationally about litter and speak to litterers to have a hope of improvement. Our free weekly newsletter, This Week In “Litterland”, gives people something to talk about. 

I would like people to know about and use these resources.

Hon. James Bradley
Minister of the Environment
Province of Ontario

Dear Minister Bradley,

As an elected representative, you know people are generally concerned about littering.  I am writing ahead of Earth Day 2014 to revisit an issue I tried unsuccessfully to advance using the Environmental Bill of Rights in November 2012. 
 
My Litter Prevention Program is again reaching out to you to encourage you to take a ‘hands-on’ interest in having a conversation about reducing litter. This goes beyond the cleanup and into the stream of innovation, education, awareness building and behavioural change, in which I am a specialist and acknowledged expert.
 
A City of Toronto staff report has proposed a role for the province in permitting levies to be increased on the price of cigarettes to help the municipality pay for cleanup of cigarette butts and preventive education and promotion of anti-littering specifically concerning tobacco products.  No doubt your ministry will be hearing a repeating refrain from municipalities calling for more assistance provincially for litter reduction efforts, each with its own scheme for raising the revenue.
 
Although, surprisingly, your ministry does not track the topic of litter, it is an emerging concern worldwide.  For example, there will be annual European conferences on litter beginning in May of this year.
 
Again, I request that your ministry pull together a forum where realistic solutions to littering can be brought forward and dealt with as a public collective.  Participants might include representation from Ontario municipalities, school boards, environmental groups, product stewards, tourism, business and the general public.
 
May I please have your ear to talk about this, or receive a call from one of your aides in this regard?  I enclose relevant background materials as links below. I can be reached at 416-321-0633 or via reply email, words@rogers.com.  Thank you.
 
Sincerely,
 
 
Sheila White
Founder, Litter Prevention Program
Publisher, This Week In Litterland 

Our First Annual Progress Report

Today is the closest the world gets to a calendar date dedicated to people who litter.  April Fools' Day.  Only a fool would think it is okay to spread his or her legacy of loose waste on the planet.  Yet so many people do this.  They can be rich or broke, dressed in pinstripes or tatters, drive a luxury car or take the bus.  People who litter come in all shapes, sizes, incomes and backgrounds.  This is the same description that experts use when speaking about rapists, bullies, addicts and other abusers in the anti-social realm.

Mindless fools.  One remedy to littering could be found in mindfulness training.  Awareness really does open eyes.

But, since April Fools' is all about tricks and surprise endings, here’s news that fits the bill: a quit-smoking measure has backfired on Australia, a global zealot among nations bent on legislating smoking out of existence.  Underpinning the strategy was the country’s forerunning move in December 2012 to demand plain packaging for tobacco products – no more branding with fetchingly colourful logos and designs.  All cigarettes were mandated into identical, drab packaging.

The latest study proves to be a mockery of the entire idea that plain packages reduce smoking, and, tangentially, litter.  A recent report has debunked that premise by pointing out that smoking has increased with the advent of plain packs.

Figures released March 25 from AU tobacco companies show a rise in tobacco sales by 59 million cigarettes while black market ‘branded’ packs also flooded the market in the first year of plain packaging.  Funny, tobacco sales had been on a steady downward slide before 2009 and all the attendant publicity around the government's measure.  Under the new approach, black market sales climbed by 154 per cent, according to KPMG research.  All the more to be littered, so a blow to the environmental keep clean movements as well. 

More smuggled product is being seized by Australian Customs. Illegal tobacco seizures more than doubled to 200 million in 2012/13 from 82 million in 2010/11.

Figures from the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service show illegal tobacco seizures have more than doubled between 2010/11 and 2012/13 from 82 million cigarettes to 200 million.

Two separate university studies tried but were unable to link plain packaging to deterring smoking among youth 14-17.

I bet the tobacco companies wish they could recoup all the money they expended on fighting Australia’s plain packaging laws in the first place.  This April Fools' Day, Team Big Tobacco Australia is having the last laugh, if not the last cough.

And did I mention that G20 leaders have agreed to host a 2016 world summit on litter laws and solutions?  April Fools'!

See the news story that inspired this blog.

I paid my banker a visit and, no surprise if I’m involved, the topic turned to litter.  It comes up as soon as I am asked what I do for a living.

“Mr. $” shared his observations from back in his native Mumbai.  Floods aren’t the real threat, he told me, but the garbage clogging drains. 

In fairness, we can’t blame the garbage. The real menace is the person who casts it into the street, sending it in search of a drain to plug.  I tell him that litter and garbage have been pegged as the cause of rapid increases in dengue fever in India. 

We share words about culture and its hand in shaping disrespectful waste-handling.   Not the average topic you raise with your investment adviser.  He calls in his manager. I guess it’s not run-of-the-mill for a client to arrive saying something completely different.  We shake hands and she introduces herself as the branch manager.  She points to the bus stop outside the window to my left where a human herd has been standing in wait for the full length of my 45-minute appointment.  A city all-purpose bin is steps away from the transit shelter in and around which the passengers congregate.

Bank parking lots are notorious locales for workers on break and lunch eating and sipping in their cars before or after doing their transactions inside the bank.  Smokers love to finish a smoke before entering a bank. They will flick it somewhere near the entrance.

I follow the direction of the manager’s outstretched finger as she unloads her beef about the state of chronic litter at the identified transit location.  “It’s disgusting,” she says. “Yes,” I empathize. “That is known as a ‘transition point’ in the litter prevention profession, a place where litter is likely to accumulate.”  But what I’m really thinking is this:

“Listen, lady.  Banks are some of the worst offenders when it comes to litter. You don’t have bins on your premises and you don’t have obvious recycling containers at your ATMs and in the branches.  Most bank properties are a mess and aren’t maintained regularly enough. What are you prepared to do about it?”

Every sign on the wall has something to do with financial services.  Okay, that stands to reason, it’s a bank.  But not one sign about recycling ATM receipts or keeping the area clean or using bins that should be provided. 

Banks have a stake in keeping their vicinity free of litter.  Judging from the most recent quarterly bank profits, financial institutions can well afford to be partners in litter education practices and programs.  Certainly they can do more than just point fingers.

(Excerpts from this editorial will appear in the Canadian Advertising Standards newsletter to advertisers.)

In this environmental age, portrayals of littering should be an absolute no-no in advertising.  Unfortunately, advertisers pay far less attention to the hot-button topic of litter than this multi-billion dollar global problem deserves. 

In fact, most advertising is unrealistically clean.  You won’t see roadside litter in a car commercial, plastic litter in a travel ad or trash bins in advertising for chewing gum.  There’s a disconnection between the product being promoted and the waste associated with it, unless you’re marketing garbage bags.

We see nymphs skipping down to the beach, portable lattes and smoothies in hand. Hikers in the forest clutch their disposable coffee cups and picnickers and fast food and beverage partakers enjoy their meals with never a recycling container in sight.

‘Recycling’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘zero waste’ are today’s popular corporate buzzwords.  Frankly, corporations fall down on their responsibility to address their product litter.  Sometimes they slip up.  The recent TV image of a disavowing smoker using a school stair instead of an ash receptacle to extinguish the cigarette butt inadvertently promotes littering. Plastic bottles strung along a beach sell us a water filter.  Animated lottery tickets for a prominent charity float from the sky, littering a winding highway below.  These images are gratuitous.

A particularly egregious example: the long-running Brita water filter commercial showing a trail of plastic bottles floating surf-side as far as the eye can see is a blatant extortion of littering as a means to corporate gain. It's as though Brita makers had never heard of beach litter and marine litter.  I believe that anytime littering is portrayed it should be accompanied by the right call to action with writing on the screen. 'Buy our product, please don't litter', for example. A universal litter prevention icon on every ad from producers, most of whom dodge, weave and contort, will do anything to steer clear of their products' litter problems.

Creative departments and agency leaders could do a world of good by screening ads to omit acts of littering.  Corporations who hire them would serve society well by flexing the power of their advertising muscle to drive a generic campaign around litter prevention.  

Watch the ground when a Tims contest comes to town.  If you’re Canadian you must know I’m talking about Tim Hortons, the national leader in coffees-to-go.  You will be very familiar with the chain’s Roll Up The Rim To Win contest.  It has returned with a vengeance. Tims has rolled out the ‘roll-up’ to mark its 50th anniversary.  From now until April, the popular marketing strategy is not only back, it’s bigger and better.  Bonus roll-ups, additional chances: even more reasons to Hoover up the Timmys.  So keep your eye to the ground. Popular coffee contest = more littered lids + cups.

I have talked to Tim Hortons brass about the litter problem.  The company expresses concern about the rate of littering in the takeaway coffee cup community (TCCC). Like most companies, however, they see littering among the TCCC as a behavioral problem, not a business issue for them. The company’s response to litter is muted, to say the least, but the issue makes officials wince in private. They don’t want their good corporate images suffering any splash back from an association with litter.  I don’t see how that can be helped when their branded litter is staring at us from the ground up. 

An executive at Tims relays a classic story.  It was September 2009, upon the repatriation of Tims’ corporate ownership back to its home roots in Canada from the US.  Prime Minister Stephen Harper, like most elected officials, never one to shy away from an opportunistic political play, arranged a tour stop at Hortons’ HQ for a rah-rah session.  He skipped a high level UN meeting in New York to visit Tims executives and self-credit  Conservative policies for the  company’s decision to transfer its corporate paperwork after being 15 years registered in Delaware. 

Harper was due to show up at the Oakville head office and protesters knew it.  They  would be dogging him at this particular campaign stop.  But first they would all meet at the franchised Tim Hortons outlet at the corner and grab some refreshments to go.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) showed up, angry about the seal hunt. Environmentalists - anyone with an axe to grind, their takeout coffees, bagged goodies in hand and placards - rallied in front of Tim Hortons’ Oakville nerve centre that day.  Even the PETA seal mascot had a large coffee in hand.  The ballyhoo was over soon enough without incident.  But at the end of it all corporate officials had to shake their heads when they saw all the packaging the protesters had left outside, littered about. 

I guess we know where the problem really lays, right people?  With people. Hockey dad Harper loves his Tims, but does he ever talk about litter? No, at least not to my knowledge.  Protesters, they love the planet, but do they respect the earth? Not in this story.

Back to the contest business for a moment, and the Hortons chain isn’t the only one that can be blamed for product litter (McDonald’s, are you reading this?) – coffee contest promoters have an obligation to recognize that their peel-off promotions  generate even more littered cups and lids, and let’s not forget stir sticks and creamers.  Roll up, sure folks, but not throw down.

Hear Sheila on the Gary Doyle Show 
AM570 Kitchener-Waterloo Radio
11:05 a.m. on Friday, February 7, 2014

Toronto litter prevention expert Sheila White is taking on big guns Pfizer and Young & Rubicam over a national television advertising campaign in Canada that portrays a woman littering.

White, founder of litterpreventionprogram.com, has complained to the giant Pfizer pharmaceutical company about its television commercial for nicotine replacement therapies, running until March in both English- and French-Canadian markets.

It features a female smoker returning to the high school where she first started smoking cigarettes. At the end, she stubs her cigarette butt on the steps of the school.  White wants that image of littering altered and replaced, or the ad substituted or pulled. Pfizer Canada says that’s not going to happen.

“Littering is unlawful in Canada and around the world,” White says. “This commercial showing a woman smoking on school property and leaves the impression that littering is acceptable. Towns and cities everywhere struggle with the butt litter problem.  Ads like this one contribute to the problem we face as educators trying to communicate that littering is wrong.”

White says creators of the ad at Young & Rubicam could easily have instructed the actor to extinguish the cigarette end in a pocket ashtray or street receptacle.  She is frustrated that the ad will continue to run without changes.

“We want the message to be, ‘if you can’t quit smoking at least quit littering’,” White said. “Litter is a huge environmental problem that deserves some respect and attention from big-moneyed advertisers."

Made of plastic, cigarette butts are a form of hazardous waste and a major pollutant that lawmakers the world over want to eradicate from the environment.

White wants advertisers, their agencies and regulators in Canada to consider littering as offensive under “unacceptable depictions and portrayals”, Section 14 of the code set by the Canadian Advertising Standards Council, a self-regulatory body.  Advertising shall not “undermine human dignity; or display obvious indifference to, or encourage, gratuitously and without merit, conduct or attitudes that offend the standards of public decency prevailing among a significant segment of the population,” Section 14(d) of the code states.