Litter a Persistent Problem in Arbutus Area

Smashed beer cans. Wrinkled Burger King wrappers. Empty cigarette cartons.

This is the kind of litter that dots Halethorpe’s Potomac Avenue, and the kind that is a familiar sight throughout our community. Despite cleaning efforts from community members and the county, the garbage along Halethorpe’s and Arbutus’s roads and streams appears day after day—for some reason, people still throw their trash on the ground.

“It’s pure laziness,” says Michael McAuliffe, a board member of the Halethorpe Improvement Association (HIA). McAuliffe, as a volunteer, picks up litter along Potomac Avenue several times a year. He knows all too well the patterns that litter leaves. Most trash comes from passing cars, McAuliffe says.

Many drivers in the safe havens of their cars don’t wait until their next stop to use a trash can, so it’s out the window for their water bottles and fast food wrappers.

McAuliffe has seen it even as he’s picking up trash along Potomac Avenue—he’ll leave a stretch of road clean and when he comes back an hour later, there will be a new cup or box to pick up. For him, it’s “extremely frustrating.”

The litter is an eyesore that McAuliffe wants to keep from getting out of hand. Having a clean appearance, McAuliffe says, is an important aspect of community pride.

But litter is not just an eyesore: garbage thrown from car windows finds its way into streams and storm drains, and eventually flows into the Patapsco River and the Chesapeake Bay. As has been repeated and re-repeated to us by officials in government and school, toxins and harsh chemicals in this garbage damage the watershed’s aquatic ecosystems. This is a problem that requires more attention than it's getting, and more than a just little effort to fix.

The HIA adopted Potomac Avenue in 2004 through Baltimore County’s Adopt-a-Road program, which provides volunteer cleaners, of which the HIA only has a handful, with trash bags, gloves, vests, and trash pickups. Not being enough to eliminate the litter, however, the HIA has had to go beyond what the county has provided. The organization has taken funds from its own budget to install trash cans along the road. Since the trash cans have been put in place, there has been a decrease in litter in the area—a small victory—but the trash still turns up.

Other efforts in the community include similar measures by the Arbutus Business Association and the Arbutus Town Hall. The county government has also lent a hand in trying to fix the issue. Legislative aid to Councilman Tom Quirk, Peter Kriscumas, says keeping communities litter-free is "a hard task to keep up with."

The county has its Adopt-a-Road program, as well as the Clean Green 15 Litter Challenge: a program that rewards public school students for picking up as much litter as they can, in places like parks and schoolyards, in 15 minutes.

Yet with all the effort and money put in by the community and government, litter remains ever-present. It is the mindless decision to toss a piece of garbage on the ground that persists as a threat not only to our community’s reputation, but to life in our Chesapeake Bay.

Some people will always throw litter from car windows, but we can change and become part of the solution. McAuliffe notes that “a lot of people are reactionary rather than being proactive.” The solution to keeping our community clean is to be proactive:

• Pick up a stray water bottle before there are ten in its place
• Know where the trash cans are on your morning walk
• Use a plastic bag as a trash can in your car

Don’t wait until your street is covered in litter to act. Make an effort now to stop this problem from growing.

Be proactive—doing the smallest thing will make a difference. If everyone pitches in, nobody’s effort will go to waste. Litter has no place in our community, and it does not have to be a problem.