For my second round of community service, I, like several other lodgers, headed to Pony Pasture to clean up trash. As I wandered the paths searching for litter, I was struck by how little litter there actually was. I of course managed to fill the plastic bags I brought with me, but only by really walking up and down the trails. Of the trash clean-ups in which I’ve participated in the past, mostly alongside roads and in urban areas, I’ve often been overwhelmed by the amount of trash that builds up in the scrubby, bushy areas bordering highways. Thinking about how much more litter I’ve seen along roads, I began wondering about why people litter. Perhaps there is something about being in a car, traveling across land at an unnatural rate, that causes people to feel less connected to the areas around them. For those who litter while walking, perhaps they feel that no one will notice or that someone will clean up after them. For someone who’s hesitant to throw apple cores out the window for fear of attracting deer and other animals to roads, it’s baffling that there are people who don’t consider the consequences of their littering. I mean, with up to $1,000 fines for littering, how can it be such a casual and apparently common practice?
Still thinking about the psychology of littering, I began to suspect that the relative cleanliness of Pony Pasture might be partly due to all of the trash and recycling receptacles placed throughout the park. I walked down almost all of the paths that lead from the main path to the river, looking for trash, and next to almost every side path there was a wooden box with both trash and recycling bins inside. I saw people walking out from the river stop and throw trash and recycling into these bins. Though it is still slightly harrowing to me that this is so necessary to keep trash contained, I commend the James River Park System for taking this preventative approach and providing this battalion of receptacles to combat the pervasive problem of littering.