Litter is all over Pike, needs to be cleaned

Last Saturday the Kiwanis Club held its annual Tour de Pike bicycling event. Riders came from across the state to spend the day cycling across our community.

For the past two or three weeks, several concerned citizens including Trisha Dabbs, Walker Chandler and David and Carol Lacy have spearheaded attempts to clean up the trash along our roads and highways so visitors to our area wouldn’t see an unsightly mess but rather take in pleasant rural scenery as they drove, biked or hiked through Pike.

We should all be concerned about littering. It’s a crime, punishable by fines, to toss trash out of your car windows, throw packaging down in parking lots and drop beverage containers where ever you happen to be when you finish your bottled water or soda. To add insult to injury, once an area becomes littered, chances are that it will attract even more litter.

According to a 2009 study by the Keep America Beautiful organization, the annual cost of cleaning up litter in the U.S. is $11.5 billion. Most of this cost is borne by businesses at a price tag of $9.1 billion. Another $1.3 billion is paid by states, cities and counties, and educational institutions spend about $241 million for litter cleanup.

Litter cleanup costs are significant but let us also consider the indirect costs of littering upon our quality of life. According to KAB, indirect costs “include the degree to which litter reduces the value of real estate, deters a customer from entering a business or a new employer from locating to a community.” Look at these statistics from KAB’s 2009 study on the effects of littering:

• 93% of homeowners say a littered neighborhood would decrease their assessment of a home’s value and influence their decision to purchase a property.
• 36% of business development officials say litter impacts a decision to locate to a community.
• 55% of realtors think litter reduces property values by about 9%.
• 60% of property appraisers would reduce a home’s value if it was littered.
• The presence of litter in a community decreases property values by a little over 7%, according to the National Association of Home Builders pricing model.

If we’re serious about developing tourism or attracting new businesses and jobs to Pike County, we must get serious about cleaning up our litter. Did you notice I said “our litter”? Even if you aren’t a litterer, the trash other people leave is a problem for all of us because we may be losing opportunities to create jobs.

I ask that every Pike citizen do his or her part to pick up trash and dispose of it properly. I also challenge our residents with litter prevention. It’s much easier to do the right thing and put trash in a proper waste receptacle than it is to pick up litter once it has been thrown upon our roadways.

A clean physical environment will benefit us all. Please do your part to keep Pike beautiful.