No Deposit, No Return

Bob Keller is an historian and editor of the photo essay book Whatcom Places. In 2004 RE Sources named him an “Environmental Hero” for his work with the Whatcom Land Trust. Last month, the Community Food Co-op honored Bob as a “Cooperator of the Year” for community service.

In the recent past, the Skagit Valley Herald published an article I wrote about roadside litter in Skagit County; the article included language scolding the “lazy slobs’ who litter. Within two weeks someone had stolen the sign with my name that had hung over our gate for twenty years, plus inflicting a few other anonymous insults. This year, I’ve retreated north to Whatcom County, cleaned up my language and used a newspaper not read by lazy slobs.

Maybe shifting counties to publish this report (from Skagit to Whatcom) and being vague about location will avoid similar public backlash.

My wife and I own 44 acres bordering 3,900 feet of a semi-remote secondary road somewhere in the North Cascades. Every winter before ferns and grasses return, I patrol the road for one year’s contribution of litter. Here’s the 2004 accumulation:

112 scraps of foil, paper, plastic, bottle caps, straws, rags, etc.

41 beer bottles and cans

34 heavy metal plugs, use unknown

11 soft drink containers

9 plastic bags

5 coffee containers

3 balloons (popped)

3 Gatorade containers

3 water bottles

2 hubcaps

2 cigarette packages

1 section stove pipe

1 Ben & Jerry’s ice cream carton

1 condom (not popped)

1 can of sealant (full)

1 shotgun shell casing

1 Yukon Jack bottle

1 pair black plastic pants (ripped)

1 coffee can (Hills Bro.)

A roadside excavation project in November reduced this year’s 266 total items from previous years’ totals, nevertheless I found an average of seven pieces for every 100 feet of road frontage. The good news is the small number of cigarette smokers, who are notorious for flicking their waste everywhere (I don’t, however, handle or count any of their butts).

Trash, of course, provides marvelous social commentary (if litter is ancient enough, we honor it with the title “artifact”). A delightful excursion into our modern alleys and dumpsites is “Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage” (2001) by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy. Yes, that’s Murphy the editor of The Atlantic groveling around in stuff like the above where we can learn that beer is twice as popular as soda pop, coffee and Gatorade combined, and that the most popular beer on North Cascade back roads is Schlitz’s.

People usually finish off their beers but not, for some reason, their soft drinks. Ben & Jerry eaters are clean and mindful when compared with the plastic baggers. The archaeologist might wonder if a single condom means more abstinence—or less safe sex? And why do people toss much more of their debris on the north instead of the south side of this mountain road?

If I’m a bit cranky on the subject, it comes from having sponsored state Initiative 256 way back in 1970. That law would have required a mandatory five-cent deposit on all beverage containers. We spent $6,300 on the signature drive and election campaign combined; our opponents—grocers, bottle makers, can manufacturers, aluminum corporations, breweries, soda pop companies—spent an estimated $1.8 million to defeat I-256 by less than 2 percentage points even though we had support from Governor Dan Evans and Attorney General Slade Gorton.

Two subsequent deposit laws failed by ever larger margins, so today Washington remains sandwiched between Oregon and B.C., both of which use the free market mechanism of assigning cash value (deposits) to inspire proper human behavior.

If we now had such a law with a current 25-cent deposit, my hour’s worth of stoop labor along this winter road would have paid $15.75, assuming the same throwaway rate. Regardless, this much is clear: our state’s Model Litter Control Act, passed by industry to counter I-256, has not worked. Neither has the inspiration of voluntary recycling. To learn how well deposits do work, drive an Oregon highway and count trash pickup bags per mile compared to Washington’s rate. We’re the “Never Clean” state. §