What if trash clean-up would be on par with snow removal?

All winter hundreds of trucks, plows and all kinds of pieces of machinery stand at the ready to be deployed at a moments notice should the dreaded flakes fall.

When winter is over, after the last speck of snow has melted, and the sun stands higher on the sky, the full load of accumulated trash comes into bright focus.  Plowed to the side,  emerged from the snow piles, blown into fences by winter storms, the trash stands in stark contrast to the pristine beauty of freshly fallen snow. Yet, it attracts a lot less attention by officials.

The better Baltimore is discredited by all the trash collecting around
the sign at Uplands Parkway (Photo: Philipsen)

This begs the question, why not pursue the trash with the same fervor as the much more innocent snow? Specifically, why can't the full army of equipment and personnel be employed one more time at the end of the season to clean up? Load the trash on the salt trucks, use the loaders, sweepers and crews for picking up the bags, cans, bottles and bags?

Using the snow removal budget once more, wouldn't the sheer size of the fleet that stands at the disposal of local and State governments, be able to make a big dent into the trash that is flying around on and along the regions public streets?

A coordinated cleanup effort of this kind with participation of all that deal with snow removal, i.e. City, counties, State Highway, MTA and public and private ground-keepers, would set the stage for a cleaner, healthier and happier entry into spring and instill civic pride, a commodity that is badly bruised.

This type of clean-up would be especially useful and fill a big gap, since the mobilization of the spring and summer armies of groundskeepers who mow the medians and shoulders is still weeks away. A thorough late winter clean-up would also make the work of the groundskeepers and mowers much easier! So cost-wise, it could be a wash, but from an environmental health point it would be a huge advantage.

The trash wheel family -- Mr. Trash Wheel, Professor Trash Wheel and Captain Trash Wheel -- has collected more than 1 million Styrofoam containers since the first wheel launched in 2014. Baltimore Waterfront Partnership's Healthy Harbor Initiative 

Trash at Edmondson Highschool
 (Photo: Philipsen)

As we can't build our way out of the transportation mess with more roads, as we can't simply police our way out of crime, so we can't simply clean our way out of the trash avalanche. That is understood.

Trash clean up and trash reduction strategies must go hand in hand.

So it is fitting to talk about trash on the morning after the styrofoam ban passed in Annapolis, a bill which  Baltimore Delegate Brooke Lierman had introduced. An important step forward! Trash also made its entry also on Instagram.


Also urgent is a statewide ban on the flimsy plastic bags that hang in all the bushes and trees and a mandatory bottle and can deposit, both regulation that is common in other states.

Most of all, though, what is needed is a sense of community in which everybody has enough pride and satisfaction with his or her community as to not willfully trash it just out spite or anger.

"It may feel like a small step to take this one form of really insidious plastic Styrofoam and start with that just here in the state of Maryland, but it is a big step because (Maryland) will be the first state to ban a major form of plastic in America," Brooke Lierman.

A spring clean-up by the salt and plow crews alone would not be able to do restore civic pride, but employing the redirected full force of the people and the equipment would be a great beginning, especially if the private snow removal teams would chime in as well. Where there is less trash there is also less littering.

Trash in the fence of the ball-field at Edmondson High  (Photo: Philipsen)

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA