Litter

Is litter like murder? Not exactly, perhaps — but it's worse than you probably think. According to donttrashaz.com, more than 25,000 car accidents a year are linked to litter, scores of which result in fatalities. Of course, the environmental effects of litter are well known. Trash in the streets gets blown into the sewer system. From there, it clogs up the sewers and waterways or flows out into bays and estuaries. Chemicals and toxins from plastic bottles leech into water systems.

As Baltimore City Council grapples once again with whether to levy a small fee on plastic and paper shopping bags, groups on both sides of the policy debate already are tossing out conflicting information on whether fees work, and even whether single-use sacks constitute a significant litter problem or not. Councilman Brandon Scott introduced a bill Monday that would levy a 25-cent fee on plastic and paper disposable shopping bags.  He...

On Saturday, March 17, I was running along Route 216 in Highland. In a freak accident, a shard of broken beer bottle lodged itself in my right sole, and then proceeded to slice open my lower left leg when I took my next step. Luckily, good Samaritans heard my cries for help; several drivers also stopped to help me stanch the bleeding. Although furious at the careless litterbugs who caused my injury, my faith was restored by these caring neighbors, as well as by the Clarksville-based EMTs, who treated me with professionalism and humor.

Shirley Gregory of Dundalk takes pride in her home, but unwelcome visitors have sometimes thwarted efforts to keep her yard tidy. When she and her husband had a brick patio laid, it wasn't long until the bricks were caving into the ground. Rats had burrowed in a nearby yard and dug tunnels into Gregory's property. "I was, like, shocked - that's what a rat did," said Gregory, president of the St. Helena Community Association. "Well, more than one rat. Quite a few rats. " Gregory was one of more than 100 people who turned out Saturday morning for a community cleanup.

I am disappointed in the narrow-minded view of the Sept. 6 letter, "Same-sex marriage amounts to experimenting on children. " The letter-writer states that "Marriage across time and culture has always been a loving, committed relationship between a man and a woman. " This statement does not take into account that over 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. What about unhappy marriages where a woman or man is being beaten or verbally abused by their spouse? She also states that "marriage provides a safe environment for children and connects them to their biological parents".

On Oct. 22, the Baltimore City Council passed a bill confirming my long-held belief that people in Baltimore actually think trash cans cause litter. Though the bill appears simply to criminalize the dumping of excess quantities of noxious waste in public trash receptacles, it echoes many conversations I have had over the years asking about putting more trash cans around the city. Repeatedly, I would hear - from fellow citizens, to small shopkeepers, to contacts with well-placed staff in the Department of Public Works and the City Council - variations on this theme: "The more trash cans we put out, the more people dump in and around them and the messier things get, and neighbors ask us to remove them.

I want to thank whoever dumped two sofas on the side of Supplee Lane for reminding the rest of us how ignorant some people are and how throwing "trash" destroys the little bit of beauty left in our area It took a lot of idiocy to haul those couches out of your house, load them on a truck, drive the truck to Supplee Lane, and then dump the first couch partway down the road, and then drive a little further and dump the second one. You could have...

In her letter last week, Sally Stunkel described trash accumulating along certain walking paths, and asked "What can we do?" While the situation is unfortunate, there is plenty we can do. If it's a Columbia Association pathway, I bet you could convince them to clean it up. I think its better to do it ourselves. Grab a bag and meet me down there. Send me an email at vtwakeboarder@live.com , lets work out a time and I'll help you clean it up. I'll even take three bags home to put at my curb.

LATELY, I've been making people pick up their own trash."Excuse me," I say politely, "I think you dropped this." And then I hand their litter back to them. That's when they give me The Look, rolling their eyes. It started this way: While I was at a stop light at the intersection of Wolfe and Lombard streets, I saw a man push a shopping cart through the neighborhood. There was a sign on the front of his cart promoting his car washing and waxing business. He was like a one-man traveling show and I admired his enthusiastic entrepreneurial spirit.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - Once again, butts rule on New Jersey beaches. For the eighth year in a row, cigarette filters topped the list of debris collected during two beach sweeps last year - 39,196 of them, about 16 percent of the entire 38-ton haul and about 5,000 more than were collected in 2000. Like props from a bad soap opera, the annual tally of the beach sweeps includes 133 shotgun shells, 47 crack cocaine vials, a whoopee cushion, two beepers, a pregnancy test and a last will and testament.

Environmentalists flocked to Annapolis Tuesday to push their green agenda, encouraged by predictions that offshore wind legislation would pass this year while one legislative leader warned that other ambitious measures may take a little longer. An estimated 400 people from across Maryland crowded into a meeting room in the Senate office building for the annual environmental legislative summit, where they got pep talks from Gov. Martin O'Malley and General Assembly leaders about a green agenda this year that's generally less sweeping than last year's.

In a bid to boost recycling and reduce litter, a trio of lawmakers announced plans Monday to push for legislation that would levy a refundable nickel deposit on every beverage container sold in Maryland. But the announcement drew prompt opposition from beverage distributors and merchants, who argued it would hurt their sales and employment, and undercut rather than help recycling. Dels. Maggie McIntosh and John A. Olszewski Jr., Democrats representing Baltimore City and Baltimore County, respectively, said they would soon introduce a bill titled "Recycle for Real," which if passed would make Maryland just the 11th state to require deposits on all bottled and canned drinks sold.

Daniel Buccino's op-ed piece, "Does Baltimore think trash cans cause litter?" (Nov. 6) spotlights an illogical trash policy that has plagued this city for at least 20 years. There used to be big trash cans at many trail-heads leading down to Liberty Reservoir, one of three large lakes whose contents and wooded surroundings are managed by the city and are Baltimore's clean water source. In my book "Soldiers Delight Journal," I mentioned picking up trash with my wife around one of Liberty's lovely coves to improve its beauty and purity.

On Oct. 22, the Baltimore City Council passed a bill confirming my long-held belief that people in Baltimore actually think trash cans cause litter. Though the bill appears simply to criminalize the dumping of excess quantities of noxious waste in public trash receptacles, it echoes many conversations I have had over the years asking about putting more trash cans around the city. Repeatedly, I would hear - from fellow citizens, to small shopkeepers, to contacts with well-placed staff in the Department of Public Works and the City Council - variations on this theme: "The more trash cans we put out, the more people dump in and around them and the messier things get, and neighbors ask us to remove them.

I am disappointed in the narrow-minded view of the Sept. 6 letter, "Same-sex marriage amounts to experimenting on children. " The letter-writer states that "Marriage across time and culture has always been a loving, committed relationship between a man and a woman. " This statement does not take into account that over 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. What about unhappy marriages where a woman or man is being beaten or verbally abused by their spouse? She also states that "marriage provides a safe environment for children and connects them to their biological parents".

Back River isn't the only Baltimore area water body cluttered with used tires.  The Gunpowder River, arguably one of the region's most popular recreational water ways, has its share, too. Gunpowder Falls State Park draws anglers, kayakers, picnickers, swimmers and scads of tubers - so many, in fact, that friction has arisen over the transformation of the river through northern Baltimore County into what critics call a " superhighway of...

A new heroine is blossoming in Annapolis. She's feminine, she's floral - and she's unforgiving about litter. Meet Lacey Anne Regina, the Queen Anne's Lace leader of a new squad of cartoon characters that could soon adorn many of the state capital's trash cans in an effort to keep streets litter-free. The campaign is the latest flower-oriented initiative of Mayor Ellen O. Moyer, who has been known to pluck weeds on her strolls around town and drive around for weeks with boxes of daffodil bulbs in her car. One of Moyer's first acts as mayor was to replace the city's Lady Justice seal with its rose and thistle flag on City Hall letterhead.

In a bid to boost recycling and reduce litter, a trio of lawmakers announced plans Monday to push for legislation that would levy a refundable nickel deposit on every beverage container sold in Maryland. But the announcement drew prompt opposition from beverage distributors and merchants, who argued it would hurt their sales and employment, and undercut rather than help recycling. Dels. Maggie McIntosh and John A. Olszewski Jr., Democrats representing Baltimore City and Baltimore County, respectively, said they would soon introduce a bill titled "Recycle for Real," which if passed would make Maryland just the 11th state to require deposits on all bottled and canned drinks sold.

On Saturday, March 17, I was running along Route 216 in Highland. In a freak accident, a shard of broken beer bottle lodged itself in my right sole, and then proceeded to slice open my lower left leg when I took my next step. Luckily, good Samaritans heard my cries for help; several drivers also stopped to help me stanch the bleeding. Although furious at the careless litterbugs who caused my injury, my faith was restored by these caring neighbors, as well as by the Clarksville-based EMTs, who treated me with professionalism and humor.

Some ideas just won't go away. Researchers with the University of Maryland have taken another look at bottle-deposit laws and found that they actually do reduce litter without undermining recycling of other waste items. Asking consumers to pony up a nickel or dime per bottle - which is refundable when the empties are brought back - has curtailed litter in states with bottle-deposit laws by 30 to 64 percent, the researchers found.  The UM study, released Wednesday, was sponsored by the Abell Foundation and the Waterfront Partnership , a nonprofit group of Inner Harbor businesses and institutions that's pushing to clean up Baltimore's harbor and streams.