KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL - DON'T LITTER

What happens when we add the cost of cleaning parks, beaches, and other vacation spots? Here's one example. $100,000 to clean parks, beaches, and highway litter for only one vacation weekend in only one area. Multiply that on a national basis by weekend after weekend, holiday after holiday. Here's another indication. $5 million a year for just three counties in California. Imagine then what the total litterbug cost must be on a nationwide basis. We are paying out millions upon millions of dollars to try and eliminate a situation which should not have occurred in the first place. This is money that medical research could use, for example, on lives instead of litter. Our charities could use it, too. And that money would build a lot of schools for our children. And on and on through a long list of other worthwhile activities. We are throwing away money, tax money, on trash, on rubbish, year in and year out. We are making a very expensive contribution, a senseless and needless contribution, to public carelessness. And the public is you and I. We are paying and paying for unwanted trash. Law enforcement agencies do all they can, but they cannot be with us all the time. Now and then, however, In addition to the fine already imposed on you, I'm going to add a further stipulation and make it a part of the sentence of this court. On Wednesday morning next, at 9:00, you will go to the highway on which you were apprehended. You will be assigned to clean up 1 mile of that highway. Clean it so that it is absolutely free of roadside litter. The court stands adjourned. Yes, the law is one approach to the solution of the problem, one which is becoming increasingly effective in many states. Other approaches, too, are being used. Public education, advertising, publicity, promotion on a national scale. In addition, every effort is made to make the orderly clean disposal of litter simple, easy, and automatic. Obviously, though, the litterbug doesn't give up easily. What then is the answer? It is one which will be found when the motoring public corrects a bad habit which they have developed and are passing on to others, the bad habit of unconscious vandalism. To correct this, we must first change our basic attitude and realize that nearly all of us are litterbugs. Me, a litterbug in person? Me? But I won't be again. And I criticized other people for littering? Other people are you and me. We'll all have to make a special effort to keep our parks and roadsides clean. It hadn't occurred to me before, but the idea hit me all at once, that I'm as bad as the deliberate litterbug. And I'll bet that you are, too. Often, without realizing it, we're all guilty. Only as we become aware of the part we ourselves play in creating the litterbug problem, can we make our own contribution to its solution. There's a simple yardstick we can use. And here it is. What have I done today to qualify as a litterbug? Perhaps you can remember, perhaps not, because the great majority of us scatter litter automatically without giving it a conscious thought. The answer, of course, is to give these actions conscious thought and then not do them. If we resolve to accept as a personal responsibility the elimination of our own share of littering, the ugly scourge that now exists on the face of America will disappear. We have a beautiful country. We have wonderful highways. And we have marvelous cars to drive to any spot we wish to visit. We also have a greatly expanded highway program in the making, one which will make even more enjoyable our avenues of travel, if, that is, we stop the nonsensical litterbug habit, and stop it now. Quietly, uncomplainingly, nature endures. In the litterbug problem, though, she needs our help. And we, you and I, individually, are the only ones who can help, since we are responsible. Each and every one of us has a choice. We can allow this disgrace to continue and inevitably become worse. Or by ending it, we can restore to our country the grandeur of unspoiled beauty and regain for ourselves a priceless heritage, a heritage which all of us should regard as our privilege to preserve, not our right to squander. Breathes there a man with soul so dead who never to himself hath said, "This is my own, my native land." Yes, our native land, America. Her beauty is in our hands. Let us guard this treasure well. Our America, the beautiful.