I don't understand why the local governments do such a poor job at cleaning litter. Do they not understand how bad it is? In NYC, the Bronx is utterly filthy.
NYC's approach (or lack of an approach, depending on how you look at it) has been to unevenly distribute trashcans. This student made an interesting visualization of the distribution[1].
Unsurprisingly, trash can placement correlates with neighborhood wealth. Poorer neighborhoods get fewer city-managed trashcans, so more trash ends up on the street.
It'd be an interesting jobs program. Cleaning up neighborhoods can have a lot of beneficial effects like reducing the amount of new litter. It could even reduce crime. It's also a job that would get people outside and keep them moving which is probably better for their health than being chained to desk all day, and it can't be done (even poorly) by a chatbot
Would you though? As somebody else pointed out it could be a good public works/job creation program. You could probably put 4-5 people to work cleaning up a year for less than 1 cop. I’m kind of making up numbers here but I feel like that can’t be too far off what with salary, pension, equipment, etc.
A few hundred people dedicated to taking care of litter would likely make a difference anywhere. You can get that for far less than $6 billion. You could pay 1000 people $1000/day to do it and you’d be at $365mill.
China does it well. You can't get unemployment benefit, but if you can turn up for work sober every day and are prepared to do menial work, you are guaranteed a job.
Chinese cities are clean and tidy, not because people don't litter - they litter much worse than Americans or Europeans, from what I've seen - but because someone is paid to clean up the litter.
This works best when you pair it with promoting personal responsibility, otherwise you have to be careful it doesn't lead to the mindset of "I can throw this on the ground because it's somebody else's job to pick it up."
People already throw things on the ground because it’s somebody else’s job to pick it up. It’s a culture issue broader than simply “personal responsibility.” People in the US don’t like to be inconvenienced or we tend to shriek about personal freedoms.
In the US you likely need wildly punitive measures - not just small fines - to deal with the issue. Also would fall along party aligns with minutes and become a partisan issue immediately.
Yes well-executed public awareness programs can shift culture over several years (this campaign is over 40 years old wow!) but we also need to clean up what's there now and what will continue to accrue until that shift occurs.
I would be more than happy to see my city or state tax dollars put towards a cleanup initiative. We have a particularly fragile ecosystem
Unsurprisingly, trash can placement correlates with neighborhood wealth. Poorer neighborhoods get fewer city-managed trashcans, so more trash ends up on the street.
[1]: https://studentwork.prattsi.org/infovis/visualization/waste-...