Cost of Litter And Illegal Dumping In Texas

If I had to say which state has the most comprehensive anti-litter program, it would be Texas. Not only is their slogan Don’t Mess With Texas excellent, their website is full of interesting information and stats that they gather every 2 years. Plus, if you litter, you can get jail time. In 2017, a new law went into effect in which a judge can sentence anyone caught and convicted of littering to as many as 60 hours of community service — picking up trash or working at a recycling center in their county. Plus they have to pay the fines and could get jail time.

A study from 2017 brought up the cost of litter that taxpayers pay in Texas. The study was in nine cities which comprise 25% of the population in Texas. $50 Million USD are spent just to keep the cities clean. Think about this is only 25% of the population and nine cities, how much do the others pay. The study was commissioned by Texans For Clean Water and prepared by Burns & McDonnell, nine cities in Texas spend more than $50 million annually on prevention, education, abatement, and enforcement efforts.

The Don’t Mess With Texas Anti- Littering Campaign 

•  1 in 4 Texans admits to littering in the past year.
• If every person in Texas picked up just two pieces of trash every month, our highways would be completely litter-free in just one year.
•  62% of Texas smokers admit to tossing their cigarette butts out of the window of their cars.
• Tire debris is the second largest component of litter and is pervasive across all areas of Texas.

Other cities

• Lufkin: $16,600 on prevention, $2,000 on education and outreach, $149,900 on abatement and $50,600 on enforcement, for a grand total of $232,800 a year.
• Midland: spent $2,000 on education and outreach, $122,800 on abatement, and $227,000 on enforcement, for a grand total of $500,200.
• Beaumont: highways and nearly 4,000 empty lots, city officials are considering taking over their cleanup at a cost of up to $250,000 a year.
• $65,000 of City of Dallas tax payer money was spent picking up and disposing of bandit signs (Source) 

Texas is unique:

• 300 Miles of Coastline
• 2nd largest state in the United States after Alaska
• 12% of Texas is desert
• 22.5 million acres of public land, with the federal government owning less than 2 percent of Texas
• Borders Mexico and has litter from illegal immigrants.
• 1980 to the present, at least 70 tropical or subtropical cyclones have occurred in Texas
• 2,000 spills a year in Texas
• 132 tornadoes touch Texas soil yearly.

Beach Clean Ups

• Since: 1986, more than 504,000 volunteers have removed 9,300 tons of trash or 18,762,600 pounds of trash from Texas beaches,
• 2017: Texans picked up over 80 Tons of trash from Texas beaches.
• 2016: 5 tons of trash from 35 miles of Southeast Texas beaches during the Texas General Land Office’s fall Adopt-A-Beach Cleanup.
• 2019:432 volunteers joined together and removed 7,436 pounds of trash from 23 miles of beaches and bays in the Coastal Bend area.
• 10x more trash washes up on the coast of Texas than any of the other Gulf states throughout the year. Most of the trash, 69 to 95 percent, was plastic.

Resources 

• Texans For Clean Water Litter Cost Study 
• Don’t Mess With Texas 
• Texans For Clean Water 
• Conserve, Renew, Restore: Framework for Implementing the RESTORE Act on the Texas Gulf Coast
• TexasAdoptABeach.org
• Illegal Dumping Texas