To the editor:

This is a tardy response to this paper’s editorial of more than a month ago about the terrible state of litter on Tiverton’s roads.

I too am appalled and disheartened by the amount of trash on Tiverton’s roads, a problem hidden by the arrival of spring foliage and deep snow in the winter.  Come fall though, it’s apparent that many people just don’t care and it’s not just on the roads as we all know simply by visiting any recreational area in town — beaches and otherwise.  It seems every time I find what I think a beautiful and hopefully out-of-the-way natural setting, I find the state flower growing there — a Dunkin' Donuts styrofoam cup.  

What is the mindset of a person who does this?  To me they might as well be defecating on their own sofa because, in the end, that’s just what they’re doing.  It’s as if people think their trash will magically disappear once it’s out of their sight — or they don’t mind living in their own squalor and sharing it with the rest of the world.   

Beyond an eyesore, here are the facts:  

The most ubiquitous material illegally deposited on the landscape is, without doubt, plastic.  You know all the forms it can take from cigarette butts and plastic bags to the aforementioned cup.  We take petroleum out of the earth and then deposit its refined form on the surface. 

It takes decades to truly biodegrade, if what happens to it actually adheres to the term. In the meantime it gets smaller and smaller and while it does this it is ingested more and more easily by higher and then lower order fauna regardless of where — on the street, in your yard, at the state park, on the beach or in mid-ocean.  What it does to these various organisms is not well known but most research points to toxicity (phthalates) and hormone disruption (synthetic esters) as just two likely examples.

What to do?  

Obviously behavior cannot be legislated or even enforced in most cases.  There are promises of truly biodegradable plastics on the horizon, EPI Oxo-biodegradable bags for example.  Dunkin’ Donuts, seems to be finally waking up to the bad PR of their cups everywhere and might be doing something about it, like using different materials. The jury is still out though.  

In 2013 I joined state representative sponsor Maria Cimini, Channing Jones of Environment Rhode Island and many others to testify at a state house hearing on a state-wide plastic bag ban bill. Despite at least a dozen citizens testifying and that amount again at the hearing ready to testify on behalf of the bill, it took only two restaurant and plastic bag manufacturer witnesses to kill it. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to our state’s legislative process.  

Locally some have pointed to the town’s “pay as you throw” policy as part of the problem and this may be true for many low-income residents.  I would encourage them to fill their recyclable containers and if needed pick up another since much of what people throw out should be there instead.  Of course this calls into question the veracity of most recycling efforts, as noted in the press of late.  Conspicuous consumption comes into play here as well. 

There are many non-profits fighting the good fight on the clean-up side: Tiverton Garden Club, Save the Bay, Clean Ocean Access, the Boy Scouts, Tiverton DPW to name a few.  Cleanups are continuously posted in this paper and online.  You can find many if you look.  Their work will never be finished though until we, as a society, address the root cause.  We need to make our capitalist driven economy truly take into account the costs and to address it there.  This is not an unachievable goal.  This is simply a call for an attitude adjustment to make companies liable for their products beyond their sale.

If you are lucky enough to observe someone littering in our fair town please call them out, diplomatically of course, because they’re not just hurting a few animals and creating an eyesore.  They’re establishing a new aesthetic and attitude about the kind of world in which our great grandchildren will live.  

Fifty years ago my grandmother used to say we’re going to bury ourselves in our trash.  If you want an idea of what that might look like just look overseas at any second or third world country and you’ll see the legacy of petrochemical plastics.  Where there are no controls it’s waist deep and growing.  I know, I’ve seen it.

Chris Clarendon

Tiverton