Lasting+Litter



What: Litter is our garbage that is scattered in all the wrong places. It is junk such as wrappers and plastic bags that we just toss out the car or bus window when we are done with it. Can you think of all the things we use and throw away when we are done with it? Here are a few examples. 6-pack soda can rings, foam cups, plastic bags, soda bottles. Lots of other junk makes its way into the litter community. Things such as foam insulation and styrafoam "peanuts," and gear thrown away or lost by fishermen pollute the sea as well.

Where: Litter gets into the water cycle and the sea in all kind of ways. Some of the places are: rivers, coastal rubbish dumps, left on beaches. Also did you know that it is illeagal to dump garbage into the ocean? It is, but people still do it anyway. Fishermen often throw old and or broken fishing gear into the ocean. Suprise, suprise the litter is most abundant in the big cities and towns. This litter is then deposited into a river and when it reaches the ocean the current or tide washes it all over the Gulf. Some of the litter even washes up on to the shores. If you have walked on a beach lately there is abundant plastic on the beach. The heavier items such as fishing poles, lobster traps, coins, and bottles sink to the bottom and stay there for hundreds of years before they break down. Other items such as fishing line, or plastic 6-ring soda rings just float beneath the waves and are most likely going to snag a fish or some other unwary creature. Most of us here have never seen the ocean floor. Now I am not talking about the water over your head at the beach but the water that is 10-30 feet over your head. Down there, divers tell us, the sand down is blanketed with trash. Would you like to break into a delicious looking lobster or haddock and find trash in side it?

Why: Much of the litter is paper, cardboard, or wood. Though these don’t look good they quickly rot away. Plastic is the main problem. These products are widely used because they are made to last longer. The downfall to this is that they also last a long time when discarded. Plastic is common on the beaches because it builds up over the years with out decomposing. The litter on the shore not only looks bad but it is hazardous to the environment.

What we can do: One thing we can do is have more posters or campaigns to promote recycling. Another idea we could consider is more community service to help pick up trash and other materials in the environment. A great thought would be to put more trash cans and recycle bins around and air shows about recycling.

What More Litter? : Another source of litter can be the construction of roads, bridges and power plants. This can be litter because people industrialize these once wooded areas. People, once these new roads are built, will tend to litter in the more traditional sense by throwing their used trash on to the road. If they throw something like a plastic bag over a bridge it can float down stream and swallow up fish as they go down dragging them down stream to an estuary and pollute the estuary. If people see a piece of trash, they tend to throw more trash because they see other people doing it, so they think it is all right to do. Also with new roads built, more fishermen will come to the estuary and fish, and can over fish the fish population. If the fishermen throw old line into the river it can float down to the estuaries and snag some of the unsuspecting baby fish. What Basgo should do is have a fly fishing only rule on the rivers because the fly fishermen are more environmentally cautious and they tend to not litter with line or lures.

Conclusion:What Basgo can do to solve the litter problem is we can have a town-wide trash pick-up and whoever has the most bags of trash at the end of the event is awarded a prize. Another idea Basgo could use is to make the rivers fly fishing only. Fly fishermen tend to obey the law more. I am not criticizing spin fishermen but with a hook and bait the fish tend to swallow the hook forcing themselves to be killed. Basgo has some litter problems during the high tourist seasons, but I think we can solve these problems.

Click on this link to see what happens when you don't pick up. Clean Up!