by Jon Styf
A new report on litter control in Tennessee shows the state spends $23 million each year on litter pickup and prevention and there are an average 88.5 million pieces of litter on roads at any given time.
The 2022 study showed $5.5 million is granted each year from the Tennessee Department of Transportation to individual counties for roadway litter cleanup and abatement and the $23 million overall spent on litter comes from a soft drink and malt beverage tax.
Companies are charged a 1.9% gross receipt tax on the sale of bottled soft drinks in the state.
“Overall, we learned that in the past six years, there has been a 12% reduction of litter on Tennessee roadways. While encouraging, there are still more than 88 million pieces of litter on public roads at any given time,” said TDOT Transportation Supervisor Denise Baker.
Local roads had the highest percentage of total litter at 80% while U.S. highways had the lowest litter per mile (7,386 pieces per mile).
Most of the litter was small with an estimated 679.7 million pieces (88%) items of litter were four inches or smaller.
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Jon Styf is an award-winning editor and reporter of The Center Square who has worked in Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan in local newsrooms over the past 20 years, working for Shaw Media, Hearst and several other companies.
LHC:
here in East Tennessee our country uses the trustees to clean the roadsides, and they work at the landfill and recycling center. My bet is when they finish their sentence they won’t be littering the countryside.
I once watched a Tennessee State Trooper speed past me, change lanes without signaling, throw a cigarette butt out the window, and then do a U-turn to chase someone down to give them a ticket. Model behavior indeed.
How about changing the DUI law to require the offender to wear an orange jump suit while spending 100 hours picking up this trash? This would have to good impacts. 1) it would reduce the cost of picking up trash and 2) it MIGHT cause the offender to think twice about drinking and driving. That sounds like real criminal justice reform.
I agree, Steve. I would also like to add: garbage (and recycling) trucks have trash fall off as they drive down the road, trash in the back of a pick-up allows it to fly off, trash bins fly open in windy weather, loose trash in the car flies out when the door (or sometimes window) is opened, and other scenarios.
We generate a lot of trash and without a conscious effort to reduce and contain it the roadside litter issue will continue.
May states use low-level offenders to clean up the roadsides. I’ve only lived in TN a few years but haven’t seen that around here.
The amount of trash we see along the roadside is appalling. Why do people throw trash out the window….because their parents throw trash out the window. It will take generations to change this behavior.