Education, awareness will help reduce litter

Your April 23 “Clean it up, Cedar Rapids” editorial echoes our sentiments. Since moving here four years ago, our family has been quite surprised and disappointed at the volume of litter that defaces our town and surrounding areas. Having traveled to numerous cities across the United States, the condition here appears to be considerably worse. The best example I've seen is Seattle and the surrounding region - essentially, no litter. I doubt governmental agencies there have large numbers of employees who keep things pristine; rather, I'd speculate that the public has been educated and otherwise stimulated to not litter.

I don't think we can expect any governmental body to remover litter from public areas without financial impact. Recently, as an example, the city sent a news release stating that two employees will pick up litter “when resources allow.” The release stated an area that was cleaned up was again littered after only a few hours. This speaks to the need for a significant increase in public awareness and perhaps tactics like increasing the fines for littering, taxing plastic grocery bags, expanding the 5-cent bottle deposit program to include water bottles, etc.

We need a plan. We could mobilize volunteer agencies, design and implement an awareness campaign and take further steps as determined by local government to improve the appearance of our community.

Richard Gray

Cedar Rapids