They don’t get paid for their labor, but money isn’t the reason these volunteers take turns patrolling the main streets and freeways of the San Fernando Valley seven mornings a week in their yellow vests.
Cleaning up other people’s trash is.
For four Sunday mornings in a row — along both sides of the 118 Freeway between Porter Ranch Drive and De Soto Avenue for two miles —- they filled up 117 large trash bags with litter thrown from cars.
A lot of it was found scattered around a Caltrans sign warning motorists there was a $1,000 fine for littering.
How’s that for a slap in the face? The people who don’t give a damn were telling the people who do this is what you can do with your fine. Good luck catching us.
“Nobody takes the threat seriously,” said Jill Mather, founder of Volunteers Cleaning Communities. “It’s gotten totally out of control.”
In 2019, the last year Caltrans statistics were available, the state agency estimated enough trash had been picked up along California freeways to fill 18,000 garbage trucks. More than 287,000 cubic yards of litter.
A good chunk of it, 35%, was picked up by community volunteer groups, like Mather’s, adopting a stretch of highway to keep clean.
Her crews, made up of grandmothers and grandfathers, parents and grown children, put on their yellow vests, grab their grabbers and trash bags, and do their best to keep their communities trash free.
You’ve seen them. Maybe you’ve honked and given them a “thank you” or thumbs up. They appreciate it, they really do, but what they need now is some teeth in that Caltrans sign the people who don’t give a damn so openly mock.
The California Highway Patrol enforces California’s anti-littering laws, and Caltrans says the CHP issued 3,100 citations statewide in 2019 for littering. That’s a drop in the bucket for a state with nearly 34 million registered drivers.
“That’s ridiculous,” Mather said. “You have to fine more people in order to…
Read the full article here
