Our ditches are cleaner than they were in the “good old days”. Fifty years ago, driving along a highway was like being on a path that Moses created through a garbage dump. Garbage on the left. Garbage on the right. Pavement in between.
When I was about four, we lived in Prince Albert. My grandmother taught at James Smith. We would go to visit. On the way, we would stop and comb the ditches (usually where grid roads joined the highway). A family of six, with the children aged 2 to 5, could fill the car trunk with bottles fairly quickly. One spring we collected enough bottles to buy a super-deluxe backyard swing and slide set. Our yard was the center of kid action for the neighborhood – and it was done by picking up bottles.
This was in the early 1960s. North America was still a decade away from “peak litter.” Ditches got a lot more disgusting before they got better.
Let’s look at how our roadside ditches got worse. Then we’ll look at how they got better.
Reaching Peak Litter
Changes in the way people transported and drank beer (and soft drinks) contributed to “peak litter”. When I was four, we picked up bottles. In 1969, for the first time in North America, more beer was sold in cans than in bottles. Peak litter arrived a few years later in the early 1970s.
Glass bottles were reusable. Bottlers – both of beer and soft drinks – built and maintained systems based on refunds to get their bottles back because recovery and cleaning was cheaper than buying new bottles. No legislation was needed to encourage people to bring their bottles back to the point of purchase rather than throwing them in a ditch.
Case in point: In 1957, Saskatchewan became the first province to complete its portion of the Trans-Canada Highway. The following year, the soft-drink bottler in Swift Current almost went bankrupt. People passing through on the new highway took their bottles with them instead of returning them to stores in Swift Current. The Saskatchewan government stepped in with an emergency loan to help the bottler buy new bottles.
Children, including me when I was as young as 4 years old, had ample incentive to clean up the ditches. All this changed when cans, Tetra-Paks, and other single use (“disposable”) containers appeared. The brewer or bottler had no financial interest in recovery.
The move from bottles to cans took quite a while.
The first commercial canned beer was introduced in 1935. It was a steel can treated on the inside to prevent oxidation. One problem with the first beer cans is that it took someone with hands as strong as Hercules to crush the can after finishing the beer. Attempts at macho displays could well result in embarrassment. More seriously, the beer inside the can was hard to get to. You needed a special can opener (“church key”) to get at the beer. With a bottle, openers could be improvised to get the cap off (some of my friends in the old days used their teeth). Improvisation did not work with these steel cans. In the 1950s, aluminum began to replace steel in cans, but the big change came in 1965 when Schlitz introduced a pull-top can. Good bye to the church key, hello to cans in roadside ditches. The pull-tops brought a new set of problems. They created litter that was, well, sharp. What’s more, drunks sometimes cut their fingers on the pull tops and babies sometimes swallowed them. Despite these drawbacks, sales of canned beer exploded. In 1969, for the first time in North America, more beer was sold in cans than in bottles. Sales of canned beer increased even more after 1975, when the first “stay-on” tab was introduced.
Cans were not the only thing replacing glass bottles for beverages. The Tetra-Pak was first produced in Sweden in 1952. The first North American plant opened in Mexico in 1960. It was followed by a plant in the United States in 1962. The two factories had a capacity of 3.2 BILLION disposable containers. That is a lot of potential litter.
But litter was not just bottles, cans, Tetra-paks, and other beverage containers.
The fast-food restaurants really took off in the late 1960s. Kentucky Fried Chicken opened its first restaurant in Canada (in Saskatoon) in 1955, but what we now know as KFC really didn’t take off until a decade later when the first franchise opened. The first MacDonalds in Canada opened in 1967. The first Tim Horton’s opened in 1964. By 1967, they had three locations. In 1974, they began selling franchises. You know the rest.
More litter.
It was not just the number of fast-food restaurants that generated more litter. In the 1950s and into the 1960s, there were “Drive-Inn” restaurants. People would go to an A and W or Dog’n’Suds. A server would come to their car. Food would be delivered on a serving tray hung onto the window. Food would be eaten in the car. When the meal was finished, the driver would turn on their car lights. The server would take tray and dishes away. Reusable cups, plates, and trays. No litter.
Then “Drive-Inns” were replaced by “Drive-Throughs”. Food came in a bag rather than a tray. Beverages came in cardboard rather than glass. Food was eaten while driving rather than while parked. Lots of litter. Peak litter arrived when someone figured out that orders could be processed more efficiently when inter-com systems were installed.
It came to a head about 1970. Driving down our roads and highways became like driving through a landfill. It was kind of disgusting.
So things got better.
The reaction against litter
Manitoba was the first into the anti-litter movement. The provincial government came to the conclusion that people littered because there was no good place for them to put their garbage.
Thus was launched the “Orbit” campaign.
On June 11, 1965, Manitoba Highways Minster Walter Weir told Manitobans (and those passing through the province on the new Trans-Canada Highway) to “put their trash into orbit.” I remember driving through Manitoba 3 years later. It was a bit mystifying at first, but kind of cool. You’d see a sign: “Ten minutes to Orbit.” Eight minutes later, another sign would say “Two minutes to Orbit.” Then one minute. Then thirty seconds. Then ten seconds!
Get it?
A countdown.
Then you’d hit “Orbit.” It was a round, fiberglass trash disposal thingie the exact size, shape, and color of the Sputnik satellite launched by the Soviet Union eight years earlier. Looking back, I wonder if the Hon. Mr. Weir was a Soviet plant celebrating Russian victories in the space race. I doubt it, but one can never be too sure. Connect the dots.
In any event, “Orbit” failed. The Hon. Mr. Weir had a much-to-optimistic view of human nature. He assumed that if people knew there was a non-littering place to dispose of their litter ten minutes away, they would wait and be responsible.
Oh! Such touching faith in human’s impulse control. If the garbage has got to go, it’s got to go.
But it was the tragedy of the commons that really killed the “Orbit” campaign. Manitobans quickly viewed the “Orbit” sites as a place to dump (dispose of all manner of big, unwanted things) rather than avoid littering (dispose single bottles, cans or bags). “Orbit” collapsed under the weight of Manitoban’s desire to avoid garbage dumping costs.
As the Manitoba experiment fizzled as a result of the cheapness and selfishness of Manitobans, governments and industry across North America geared up for another run at it the problem that took a more realistic view of human nature. The new tools to fight litter were:
Fear
Propaganda
That’s not quite fair. There was also an appeal to self-interest.
Beginning in 1970, governments began to pass anti-littering legislation. British Columbia was the first in Canada, with other provincial governments quickly following. The legislation was fairly similar, regardless of jurisdiction. There were two main components.
Deposits were imposed onto all beverage containers. This was different than the “refund to reuse” voluntary deposits created by brewing and soft drink companies. Deposits and refunds were mandated even where nobody had any reason to want the containers back. One side effect was that it took retail stores and bars out of the deposit and refund system since, well, nobody wanted this stuff back. Separate systems such as Saskatchewan’s SARCAN had to be set up.
A new punishable offence was created. It was called “littering”. For example, Section 10 of the Saskatchewan Litter Control Act specified that a first offence of “throwing or cause to be throwing” a container would be fined $200 for a first offence and $500 for a second offence. If the fine was not paid, people faced 30 days in jail for a first offence and two months for a second offence (As an example of the vagaries of legislative drafting, an offence at the end of June would result in 62 days in jail, while one at the end of January would result in 59 days – except in leap years). Let’s be clear. These fines were big. At the time the legislation passed, Saskatchewan’s minimum wage was $1.50 per hour. The fine for a first offence amounted to over two and a half weeks’ worth of earnings (before tax) while a second offence meant two month’s income loss.
At the same time as governments were creating financial incentives for people to dispose of their litter in a responsible way and imposing penalties on those who did not respond to incentives, efforts were gearing up to change the way people viewed chucking their trash out of a car window.
In the United States, a Keep America Beautiful non-profit was formed – largely funded by the brewery and soft-drink industries. In 1970, this organization launched the “Crying Indian ad campaign to tell people to keep their litter in their cars. This was soon followed by various and sundry Pitch In ad campaigns. In the United States, these campaigns were largely funded by industries that produced throw-away containers. In Canada, funding for equivalent campaigns. It’s an interesting commentary on the differences between the two countries, but regardless of funding source, the message was the same. “Don’t throw your garbage out your car window.” To keep the fear top-of-mind, signs were installed at regular intervals along highways to remind people of the consequences of rolling down their window with a bag or bottle in their hand.
Another innovation on both sides of the 49th parallel is the recruitment of community groups, churches, and schools to pick up the litter from highway ditches. Groups would sign up to “sponsor” stretches of highway. In exchange for the volunteer litter pick, signs recognizing their labor would be erected.
Here's the thing.
All this worked.
Our highway ditches are now, by and large, free from litter. The punitive legislation remains on the books, but the fines have not been adjusted for inflation. The signs warning of consequences are all gone. In most places, so are the signs proclaiming the cleaning power of community groups. The frequency of anti-littering advertising is a tiny echo of what it was a half century ago. The anti-littering activity has largely disappeared – and our ditches are still (relatively) clean.
Most people, most of the time, have figured out that the earth God created for us has a higher purpose than being a garbage dump.
Things had to get worse – peak litter had to be achieved – before they got better. But get better our ditches did get.