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Faith Parkhurst
CAS 138T
Persuasive Essay
“Picked it up and I Threw it on the Ground”
Reduce, reuse, recycle; three words repeated over and over again in recent days. Why?
Well, because global climate change is affecting everyone and we need to take charge of our
own lives and initiate a recycling movement. However, people have seemed to take so much
interest in recycling that they have forgotten about the original problem: littering. Despite the
fact that littering has “decreased by 61% since 1969, it [litter] is still a persistent problem” (Litter
Prevention). It seems that society today has focused so much energy on recycling that they have
failed to realize that littering is still a problem. If recycling advocates put some of their effort
into drawing attention back to littering than the problem might be able to be ratified. Littering is
a crime that when committed by one person affects the entire community. So, why can’t it be
solved the same way?
For example, take the community of students who attend Penn State University Park;
when one person throws their wrapper, water bottle, or other pieces of garbage on the ground it
affects the entire student body. The way the university is presented to people is based mainly on
aesthetic appeal, and with litter on the ground the campus no longer looks so appealing. It also
has a tendency to attract more people like a chain reaction. The more garbage seen on the
ground, the more likely a person walking by is to litter. If an individual sees a bunch of litter on
the ground they assume that one more piece of garbage won’t cause any more damage. In the
past 5 years 75% of people have admitted to littering and there is roughly 9 billion tons of
garbage littered every year. Did you know that every time you throw your cigarette butt on the
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ground it’s littering? Just a simple little burnt out cigarette is garbage and as innocent as it may
seem, when an individual decides to smoke in undesignated areas or in their cars, they just throw
their cigarette to the wind, literally (Litter Prevention).
Littering is an issue that has been around for a while, but when the issue of recycling was
raised, it seemed to have gotten left in the dust. People have gotten caught up in the issue of
what container goes in what bin instead of the garbage left on the ground. Now I know, at this
point, people may be thinking, “If I’m worried about recycling, obviously I’m not throwing my
trash on the ground,” but just because that’s your thought process doesn’t mean everyone shares
the same ideals. Students at Penn State see multiple bins to place whatever garbage in that you
are carrying based on what it is composed of. This may seem like a huge step in the right
direction, but if people are still going around campus throwing their water bottles, gum wrappers,
and other garbage on the ground, what good is recycling really doing? I feel like people are so
caught up in worrying about recycling they forget about the core issues that if they aren’t taken
care of, then recycling won’t matter. When I was growing up I witnessed an abundance of signs
warning people of fines if they littered. Despite the fact that these are still in effect, people,
students here especially, haven’t been paying attention to the ongoing issue.
Recycling is such a predominant issue that almost everywhere you go there are alternate
disposal units for different types of garbage. Plastic, metal, compost, and so on are all labeled
bins that we as students see everywhere on campus. Penn State as a community has taken a very
strong interest in recycling, yet I can walk to and from class every day and see garbage littered
nearly everywhere. As a student here at Penn State, I have an overwhelmingly strong sense of
school pride, as I know many of the other students do as well. One thing I take pride in most is
our beautiful campus and the wonderful scenery. What I hate most about this campus is when I
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walk to class and see garbage laying on the side of the road. Every time I see something on the
ground I think, “Have you no pride in your community? Have you no pride in your school? Have
you no pride in yourself?”
Like I previously stated, the aesthetic appeal of Penn State is what attracts me and most
other students, but the litter seen on the ground draws away from that beauty. It’s not only the
Penn State community where this theory applies, but everywhere. The statistics reported by
Keep America Beautiful states that a community filled with litter decreases property value by
seven percent (Litter Prevention). Living in a community full of litter decreases the value of an
individuals’ life. No one wants to walk around in filth, nor do they want to see it out their
window. I know that I would not be fond of walking out of my house every day and seeing
garbage all over my lawn or along the roadside. The chain effect of littering, however, is quite
detrimental to the issue in general. When people living in a community cannot be bothered to
take care of their environment, then how do they expect strangers to care. If no one wants to live
in a littered area, it surprises me why anyone litters at all. Garbage is so easy to dispose of
whether you are in your house, car, or walking down the road. If you travel frequently by car it
isn’t inconvenient to place a garbage bag in your car so that you can dispose of the waste
properly.
When an individual throws a piece of trash on the ground it relates to a certain quality of
laziness in their personality. The efforts of Penn State to install multiple different recycling bins
could be put to just as good of use if they were used to install more garbage cans on the
sidewalks. Placing garbage cans more frequently along the edges of sidewalks would encourage
people walking to throw away their litter instead of dropping it on the ground. Individuals take
an average of 12 steps before discarding their piece of garbage, on the ground. Twelve steps,
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that's it. On average it takes me 43 steps to get from my building to the dining commons right
outside my window. This walk takes me less than a minute, yet if I were littering at the average
rate that would mean I would have discarded garbage four times in that short walk. There is no
way that number should be acceptable, and the sad part is most people committing this crime are
motorists and pedestrians. Fifty-two percent of people littering are drivers and twenty-three
percent of them are pedestrians. Age also plays a factor in littering; the older a person is the less
likely they are to litter. As the younger generation, this astonishes me. Is it because we are a
lazier generation? Is it because we feel like the efforts we make don’t actually matter? Is it
because we just don’t care at all? Well I would hope it would not be the latter, because honestly
that would be more disgusting than actually littering. I mean one would think that we would care
about the future of our planet, community and economy (Littering Statistics).
One would think that with this abundance of littering people would try to bring the light
back to the situation, but it seems that people just don’t consider it anymore. The garbage not
disposed of properly doesn’t just cause scenic damage, but also monetary loss. On average it
costs 11.5 billion dollars to clean up the garbage yearly. In one year the damage done by
littering is astonishing. That 11.5 billion dollars paid out to help clean up could be put to such
better use, and even with this knowledge people still continue to litter. With a drastic
expenditure such as that used for littering, one would think that the issue would be more
prominent, however, it is forever overshadowed by the issue of recycling (Littering Statistics).
However, littering doesn’t only stem from the laziness of individuals, it also stems from
new and increasingly efficient packaging management. Economically, plastic has evolved into
one of the most common ways of packaging. Most products shipped by trucks are shipped in
plastic, not to mention most garbage is composed of plastic. Since the increase in use of plastic,
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plastic litter has increased by 165% (Litter Prevention). One hundred and sixty five percent is an
enormous unacceptable amount. There is no excuse for the amount of plastic littered every year.
If society wants cheap easy ways to mass produce products they should also take the initiative to
figure out ways to make the production “greener.” The fact that the production of plastic
increased is the leading cause of why plastic littering has amplified by such a substantial
percentage. However, this by now way is excusing the increase of plastic waste. Littering
overall has decreased, but it is still occurring at an extensive rate; and it is occurring everywhere.
Garbage doesn’t just accrue along the sides of roads. Litter dropped on a sidewalk could
easily wash away and get transported to a different location. Oceans, forests, and other wildlife
areas begin to amass garbage because of the natural factors transferring the unnatural litter.
Wind, water, weather, animals and other things can all be causes of litter accumulating in areas
where it wasn’t disposed. The garbage you throw on the ground can travel miles and miles not
only polluting the environment but also taking away some of its beauty. It doesn’t matter what
the proper way to dispose of different materials is if the garbage is still being thrown on the
ground. Efforts to draw attention to recycling are futile if people insist on being lazy and
littering. Recycling is not going to help with all the garbage that lies on the ground and destroys
our scenery. The amount of media attention at Penn State, and globally, that recycling has gotten
in recent years is both wonderful and horrifying at the same time.
The attention giving to recycling is like the attention given to all environmental trends.
Anything to help save the environment is going to become a headline in saving the world daily.
However, with the way society works, these trends and fads all die out without being completely
resolved. We as individuals never want to focus on something too long. Whether boredom sets
in, something new arises, or we are on the search for something different, an issue never stays
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dominant with us. Today it’s recycling, who knows what tomorrow could bring. If we’re
always looking forward, we can’t see the issues presented to us today. We’re all so focused on
what’s next that we glaze over the current problems. Littering used to be predominant in society
as an issue, but it has recently become overshadowed by the new fad of recycling. Yes recycling
is great and all but it isn’t really helping when the lazy stubborn people are still refusing to
simply dispose of their trash properly.
That may seem harsh, for I know I have been a perpetrator of the law when it comes to
littering. I am not innocent; I’ve littered and not thought twice about it. But, it is that exact
mentality that gets us into situations that we can’t get out of. The mentality that the one piece of
garbage I throw on the ground isn’t going to affect anyone is the same mentality people have
when voting and participating in other societal activities. If we lived our whole lives thinking
what we did didn’t matter than nothing would ever get accomplished and everyone would sit
around in their own filth. Not only that, but we have grown up with a “someone else” view on
life. “Someone else will pick up the garbage; someone else will call the police; someone else
will see the drunk driver and report it; someone else littered first.” We don’t live our whole lives
this way so why live any part of our lives that way?
We may feel like we’re making a difference when we talk about how “today I threw my
water bottle in the plastic only bin.” Well props to you, but what did you do with the cigarette
butt you were smoking a few minutes ago? Did you put it out on the ground and leave it;
because that is littering and no matter how much attention is paid to properly labeling multiple
different disposal bins people are still going to throw their garbage on the ground. So I challenge
you, yes you the reader of this essay, to think back to the last thing you purposely or accidentally
threw on the ground. Was it worth it? Could you have held onto it for a few more seconds until
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you passed the next garbage can? I challenge you to focus on the garbage you see lying around
and maybe pick up a piece of trash and throw it away. The more initiative we take the more
people will follow our lead. Goodness can be contagious too, let’s break the littering habit and
create a proper disposal habit. I think we can do it. But remember, sometimes recycling can
help too.
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Works Cited
"Litter Prevention." Keep America Beautiful. Keep America Beautiful Corp., 2013. Web. 06
Mar. 2013.
"Littering Statistics." Statistic Brain RSS. Cure Litter, Live Strong, 06 Jan. 2013. Web. 06 Mar.
2013.