Who is Littering? For one year, I kept track.

By Rob Cockerham | Updated May 19, 2015

Damn, I hate littering. Litter is such an eyesore, it seems so easy to resist creating it, it's downright mysterious to me. To learn more about the habits of litterers, I decided to keep a year-long record of every time I saw someone littering. Here are the results.

April 5

Asian American kid tosses his cigarette pack out of the window of his 20 year old Honda civic.

April 26

Mexican American girl ripping paper and tossing it into the parking lot.

Turned out to be rose petals.

African American 28 year old man sits in his car in Walmart parking lot and drops cigarette butt out of his car window.

May 2

Latino 28 year old drops and crushes cigarette butt in home depot parking lot.

May 17

White woman finishes cigarette as she parks car and drops butt in Save Mark supermarket parking lot.

May 25

White male 50 with orange baseball cap in Mercedes picked up trash on his way from the pumps to the Am Pm

May 26

Another 50 year old white male picking up litter on the street.

June 9

32 year old African American woman tosses an empty bottle of chocolate milk into an urban creek.

June 10

Chicana woman, 27, lets the lid fall off of her icee cup onto the ground at the gas station. It was as if this event wasn't due to her actions.

June 12

50 year old white woman in Lexus dropped cigarette butt out of her car window.

June 17

24 year old latino smoker unwrapped a new pack, dropped the top and cellophane onto the ground out of his truck window at the gas station.





July 7

38 year old African American woman tossed paper wrappings from Reeses cups out of the window.



July 12

50 year old Mexican American man, dressed for church. Littered a foot from a trash can. Also spilled gas.

July 24

33 year old pale white woman pulled the trash from her selected shopping cart and dropped it onto the ground before entering the store.

August 2

30 year old Mexican American dudes open door to their truck and watch a coke can, roller cover wrapper and gum wrapper tumble out of their door.

Sept 24

30 year old African American woman in a couple tossed crumpled receipt over her shoulder in Winco parking lot. Gum inside.

Frito lays, cheetos, bananas, with $4.30 Ebt (food stamps).

Volvo woman dropped coke bottle cap out of her car door as she prepared to leave the Kmart parking lot. 32 year old Hispanic woman.

African American kid, age 14, dropped wrapper as he walked and ate.

Oct 21

African American smoker, 35, drops butt out of her black Dodge Magnum.

Oct 30

African American man 60 picking up newspaper trash in the gutter..

Nov 15

50 year old black man with a leather hat tosses his napkins onto the ground after finishing a snack while walking.



Nov. 18

25 year old white guy drops his cigarette butt out of the window of his 240z.



White man and woman crush out cigarettes before entering an arena.

Dec 28

White man 32 walking along the street dumped a white piece of Styrofoam into the bushes.

Dec 31

White girl 25 throws her cigarette to the ground and snuffs it out before getting in her friends' car.

Jan 1

Mexican man 50 picks up litter in the parking lot at Rite Aid.

Jan 15

African American woman, 48, at bus stop throws cigarette into gutter.

White male 27 throws cigarette butt out of the window of his car.

African American bus waiting smoker

White car smoker

Feb 21

White male 46 throwing top of pack of cigarettes out of the window of his truck

Feb 21

White male 50 dropping cig butt out of his car window.

April 1

Guy drops cigarette pack out of window, drives like shit. White. 30

And that's it! I witnessed 29 incidents of littering in one year around Sacramento, California. Who are these people?

One thing stands out: Cigarettes, and the packaging of cigarettes are among the most common items of litter. 61% of the littering I saw last year was cigarette-related!

With any luck, everyone will quit lighting cigarettes in a few years and start using electronic vapor to dose themselves with nicotine. There isn't any litter or lung cancer associated with electronic cigarettes, so I'm all for it. I'm not sure how much littering is attributable to pot smoking, but it can't be worse.

I'd also like to address the subject of littering as an employment tactic. There is a saying that "This litter gives someone a job".

That's a terrible job, and you are assuming there is funding for that job. If you are in the job-creation mood, make good jobs, not terrible ones!

Good jobs: Watercolor painter. Hot dog cart operator. Singer. Doctor. Gardener.

Bad jobs: Picking up garbage. Breaking up fights between drunks. Collecting roadkill. Servicing outhouses.

Don't "make jobs" that suck. Don't throw garbage on the ground. Make jobs that are awesome! Go to concerts! Plant seeds! Buy hot dogs and watercolors!

You know how we could make the whole world as clean as Disneyland? We could quit littering.