Intro

My chosen social issue is littering. My personal experience with the issue is all of the garbage that people leave around on the ground at Skyline highschool and in the streets of my neighborhood. I assume its people who are too lazy to throw away their garbage that are doing this. I think its also not good for the environment also. I assume that littering is mostly done in poorer areas? or maybe littering gets dealt with in richer areas by people who are hired. I don’t think anyone thinks littering is good? I also assume that littering is not super destructive to the environment. I may find some diverse perspectives on how to best deal with littering. I will start research by looking for relevant science and policy around littering and find maybe opinion articles on the topic. That would help me know what people think about my topic to understand it more. I also think that I should take a look at social media posts from Utah to get a better feel for it locally and also look at local news about the issue.

Source Reflection

KSL (2022-04-10) - Littering is a ‘growing concern’ along Utah roads. It comes with a staggering cost

This is a source I found from KSL. Gleason from the Utah Department of Transportation calls it not only an environmental issue, but also a safety issue that has growing concern. Littered couches and chairs and refrigerators that were both intentionally and unintentionally dropped on the roads caused 2k crashes a year, and cleaning up the trash cost 2 million a year.

I’ve never thought of random trash on the road as litter, I’ve usually thought litter was the small stuff, so this source really opened my mind to what litter is. This also shows 2 of the ways to get rid of litter: tell people to stop littering, and cleaning up what they left behind.