AFTER ANOTHER LONG NEW ENGLAND WINTER, Massachusetts residents will soon bid a welcome hello to spring. The sun will set later, the daffodils will bloom, the last of the snow will melt, and vast amounts of litter will once again be visible everywhere you look.

Let’s be frank. The amount of litter along Massachusetts’ highways, city sidewalks, suburban streets, and secluded country roads is a public disgrace. Don’t believe me?

Take a close look when you walk around or drive around today. Your eyes will be assaulted by a steady stream of Styrofoam coffee cups, empty “nip” bottles, plastic beverage containers, and the most littered item on planet Earth—cigarette butts. We may as well rename our state Trashachusetts.

The mess in Massachusetts sends the message that Baystaters don’t care much about our state’s appearance. For a state economy that relies heavily on tourist dollars, that’s the wrong message.

In addition to being just plain ugly to look at, our litter problem comes with financial costs. According to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, prison inmates, MassDOT employees, and volunteers have collected an average of 90,000 bags of trash, some 360 tons, along our major highways annually over the past three years. These efforts cost $1.3 million in 2015 alone, a figure that does not include the cost of MassDOT employees’ time. And let’s be clear—these efforts are collecting only a small fraction of what’s out there along other roads across the state. Most of the litter remains in place or makes its way into our waterways and the ocean.

State and local authorities currently don’t have the resources they need to clean up the mess and keep it cleaned up. But we, the people of Massachusetts, do.

Rather than simply accepting the disgraceful appearance of our roadsides and public spaces, Keep Massachusetts Beautiful is urging residents, government leaders and the business community to participate in the Great Massachusetts Cleanup this spring. We’re working to organize thousands of volunteers to honor the spirit of Earth Day by participating in community litter cleanups during the months of April and May.

The Great Massachusetts Cleanup provides an opportunity for you to get out with your neighbors, friends, family, or co-workers and improve the appearance of your own neighborhoods and communities. It’s a chance for students to earn community service hours and for parents to teach their kids to take pride in their communities.

We’re working to help groups from Boston to Lowell to Cape Cod to Springfield mobilize volunteers, in-kind donations, and corporate sponsors in support of this effort. We’re also working to encourage participation in successful cleanups that are already in place, such as the Boston Shines program and the annual Charles River Cleanup.

A long-term solution to our state’s litter problem will be more challenging. If you think your local Department of Public Works has the resources to clean up the mess, you will be sorely disappointed.

To achieve a litter-free Massachusetts, the people of Massachusetts need to change their behaviors. If people simply dispose of trash and recycle properly, there will be no need for a Great Massachusetts Cleanup.

I believe our state government should also implement a comprehensive anti-litter education program that targets children and adults alike. Other potential solutions include increased funding to pay for year-round prisoner details and MassDOT cleanups. Stepped up enforcement of existing—but largely ignored—anti-littering laws would also help.

Business leaders can help by partnering with Keep Massachusetts Beautiful to provide volunteers, board members, and financial support. Together, we can work toward creating a more beautiful state, something that’s good for businesses, the economy, the residents of Massachusetts, and our environment.

Neil Rhein, founder and executive director of Keep Massachusetts Beautiful, encourages anyone who shares his interests to visit www.keepmassbeautiful.org and find a cleanup event nearby or learn more about the benefits of establishing a local Keep Massachusetts Beautiful affiliate.

2 replies on “No longer Taxachusetts, now we’re Trashachusetts”

  1. Sorry to burst your trash bubble, but I suspect that a fair amount of trash is blowing off of the trash trucks themselves, and is not the behavior of people littering. While my experience isn’t ‘proof’ of anything, I have seen trash coming off of trash trucks quite commonly, whereas I see people littering very uncommonly.
    I do see people dumping (or the results of their dumping) at donation bins, etc., but most of the debris on the highway is a result of lost cargo on trucks as they travel. One day I was on the Mass Pike and it was raining bread rolls, presumably on their way to a pig farm somewhere. On trash/recycling day, there is commonly debris left behind by the local hauler, too.
    I suspect much of the highway trash is airborne debris, not people littering.
    Yes, we should clean it up, and a clean up day is a good idea.
    Perhaps the event should skip the t-shirts, since pouring chemicals down the drain is also part of the waste cycle. Not all waste and trash can be seen. Overconsumption and unnecessary consumption is part of the problem, too. I’ll never forget the rush order I had for Earth Day t-shirts. I stayed late that night to make the screen. Watching the chemicals go down the drain (even if drain safe and legal) seemed to miss the point of the event. People do not need to put on a special robe, like a priest anointing the sick, to pick up the trash.

  2. One way to reduce the amount of litter would be to expand the Bottle Bill to include all beverage containers. Too bad the beverage companies spent millions of dollars to lie to Massachusetts residents 2 years ago to defeat a sensible ballot initiative that would have made it even easier to “Keep Massachusetts Beautiful.” The legislature could — and should — pass legislation to expand the Bottle Bill themselves.

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