Tennessee Department of Transportation Celebrates 40 Years of the Litter Grant Program

The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its Litter Grant Program this month.

TDOT’s Litter Grant Program was established in 1983 through funding by Tennessee’s Soft Drink and Malt Beverage industries. Through the program, Tennessee counties receive funding to enforce litter and tarp laws, host cleanups and recycling events, educate about litter prevention, and participate in multijurisdictional and statewide collaborations with TDOT’s Keep Tennessee Beautiful and its local affiliates, as well as the department’s Nobody Trashes Tennessee campaign.

🌿 Help Trashsquatch keep Tennessee litter free! 🚮💪 If you'd like to report a litter cleanup to our epic environmental team, call 1-877-8-LITTER or visit https://t.co/7IbEVT4F3y #myTDOT #WeAreEPIC pic.twitter.com/YqlxOkyczg

— myTDOT (@myTDOT) July 3, 2023

Since its launch, the program has “played a crucial role in this downward trend as county governments implement litter prevention and education programming at the local level, directly reaching thousands of Tennesseans each year,” TDOT writes in a press release.

The Litter Grant’s statewide approach is responsible for removing an average of 11,243 tons of litter each year across the Volunteer State, according to TDOT. Last year, nearly 29 percent of that statewide total was diverted from landfills and recycled, while 3,480 illegal dumpsites were cleaned up.

While more than 435,529 tons of litter have been removed from Tennessee roadways since the program’s launch, there are still more than 88 million pieces of litter on the state’s roadways at any given time, according to recent data by the department.

Littering became a nationwide focus in the 1950s and 1960s when a national nonprofit public education organization named Keep America Beautiful was formed and partnered with the Ad Council to produce a campaign focused on the harmful environmental effects of litter and other forms of pollution.

In 1965, First Lady of the United States of America Lady Bird Johnson joined the campaign in promoting her highway beautification campaign, stating at the time, “Ours is a blessed and beautiful land. But much of it has been tarnished. What can you do? Look around you: at the littered roadside; at the polluted stream; the decayed city center. We need urgently to restore the beauty of our land.”

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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.