What makes people litter?

While talking to Cate Pollini, a junior at Gettysburg College, she said she sees the most trash at College Apartments and doesn’t know where the trash cans are on campus. She admitted to littering a few times due to the issue of not having trash cans nearby.

Campbell also says that “People who litter say that they would be less likely to do so in areas that are clean and tidy”. If the campus was clean all the time, students would be less likely to litter it. In What makes people litterfrom The Irish Times by Conor Pope, it says the same thing, if an area is free of trash and well-maintained, it is less likely to attract litter than a place where there are no trash cans and a lot of litter (2018). While it is not the school’s fault for campus getting dirty, maintaining campus could help the matter. In the 2020 National Litter Study done by Keep America Beautiful, nearly 50 billion pieces of litter was found along roadways and waterways in the United States. That is 152 items of litter for each U.S. resident big or small (2021).

In a newspaper article about a beach sweep at Folly Beach, by Brian Hicks, it talks about drinking alcohol and littering. It states, “One young man was accused of dropping beer bottles on the beach, arguing when someone asked him to clean up his mess”(2010). The beach was full of empty alcoholic containers. When alcohol is involved, it leads to people littering more because they don’t follow the rules.

Pollini thinks that she sees the most litter after a weekend and people have been drinking and disrespecting the campus. Kerry Ellis, a junior environmental science, and political science double major at Gettysburg College said she sees the most litter outside of fraternity houses after parties. She says it’s due to people walking out of parties with their trash and throwing it on the ground. Tyler Daher, a junior in Sigma Nu at Gettysburg College agrees that he sees the most litter outside fraternity houses.