Litter Pick-Up Workers Struggling To Keep Up With Roadside Trash

Washington motorists are a messy lot. Just ask the state’s litter statistics analyst.

Last year, state Ecology Department litter crews gathered 20,865 bags of roadside trash weighing about 417,300 pounds. This year they’re nearing 1.2 million pounds, analyst Cullen Stephenson said.

“We’ve gotten 52,000 bags, and we’re still out there picking them up. We’re looking to get a couple thousand more before we quit,” Stephenson said. “It would be lovely if we were able to triple our number of bags.”

There’s a less lovely side, though.

“There was more litter out there on the road to pick up,” Stephenson said.

During the late 1980s, the average amount of litter per mile piled up much faster than population or vehicle miles traveled. More recent statistics aren’t available, but officials believe the trend is continuing.

“We know there is more litter on the roadways,” said Rod Hankinson, waste reduction manager at the state agency’s office in Yakima. “We have redoubled our efforts.”

There seems to be little difference from county to county, Stephenson said.

“We see some more litter in the urban areas, but it’s not drastic,” he said.

Each summer the department pays 14- to 17-year-olds $5.50 an hour to remove litter as the Ecology Youth Corps. From spring to fall, the state hires people, generally 18 to 25, for $8.50 an hour until cold weather sets in.

This year the two programs have engaged about 400 people to boost pickup after three years of declining litter removal and an increasing buildup of unsightly rubbish.

“We looked at our performance, and we were not doing levels that we used to do,” Stephenson said. “People were noticing that there was a lot of litter on the road, and we agreed with them.”

The litter program is allocated $2.5 million a year, roughly twice the youth corps allotment. Stephenson doubts he’ll spend more than $1.9 million but says the increase has meant cleaner roadsides.

The task seems to be never-ending.

“We’ve cleaned some areas four and five times this summer, and there is still litter on them,” Stephenson said.

“We have kind of gotten away from the anti-litter message,” Hankinson said. “The folks are getting just a bit lazy. They are not aware of their actions. The litter we’re finding is not the stuff that accidentally falls out of the car.”