Swarens: The trashy side of Indiana is showing

Tim Swarens | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption 'I hate to see kids that have to be in communities littered with trash' Volunteers and employees with Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, Indianapolis Department of Public Works and City of Indianapolis Office of Sustainability walk the Riverside neighborhood's alleyways to pick up illegally dumped trash on Friday.

As I've wandered Indiana of late, I've seen all sorts of attractions along our state's highways — vistas of overflowing garbage bags tossed or blown from passing vehicles; the spoiled remnants of enough fast-food meals to have fed Gas City for a week; the unnatural wonder of discarded plastic buckets, coolers and jugs; and mile upon beautiful Hoosier mile of shredded truck tires.

Who needs majestic mountains and amber waves of grain? Indiana, we have lost hub caps gleaming in the morning sun and McDonald's wrappers dancing in the summer breeze.

Now, the problem of Americans leaving their trash in the roadside dust isn't isolated to Indiana, of course. And it's by no means a new plague. I remember Keep America Beautiful's Iron Eyes Cody commercial that ended with a single tear on the actor's cheek after a motorist tossed a bag of trash at his feet. That reminder not to litter first aired in 1971. (Old Iron Eyes, by the way, was actually an Italian-American and not a Native American as he claimed).

But Indiana does appear to attract more than its share of roadside refuse --- we are the Crossroads of America, after all. And the problem does seem to be worse this year.

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I'm not the only one who's noticed. A spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation, Scott Manning, said that the state received 860 complaints about litter along highways in April. That compares to about 3,100 complaints in all of 2017.

Manning said that the protracted winter may have contributed to the spike in complaints because state mowing crews started their work later than usual.

A strong economy also may be a part of the problem. When jobs are plentiful, as they are now, people are more likely to swing through a Starbucks drive-through, which means more chances for the ill-considerate among us to share their empty latte cups with the world.

Still, there's an even bigger contributor to Indiana's unsightly highways: Picking up all of that roadside trash isn't much of a priority for the state.

Indiana budgets only $4.3 million a year to pick up litter along its highways. That comes to about 65 cents a year for each Indiana resident.

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The state also doesn't assign roadside trash collection to specific crews. Instead, Manning said, state highway workers are expected to pick up garbage and debris as they spot it.

That can lead to lengthy gaps between when trash is dumped along a highway and when it's eventually picked up.

For the past three weeks, I've kept watch on a couple of large cardboard boxes discarded along southbound I-465 at the west Washington Street interchange. They were still there as of Monday.

A mile to the south, what appears to have been a chair or sofa, its guts exposed for the viewing pleasure of motorists, has been rotting in the rain and sun along the interstate since at least the middle of May.

Manning said that the state does contract with the Department of Corrections to assign inmate work crews for roadside cleanup. But, as he noted, that's not free labor. INDOT supervisors have to be assigned to the crews, and the inmates are paid for their work.

State contractors also are supposed to instruct work crews to retrieve trash when they mow along highways. But a recent drive on U.S. 41 south of Terre Haute showed that to have mixed results. Tall grass along much of the highway hid most of what motorists had tossed out. But a freshly mowed stretch of median revealed a bumper crop of discarded cups, wrappers and bags.

In recent weeks, I've traveled along Indiana's highways from Indianapolis to Bloomington, Elkhart, Lafayette, Richmond and Vincennes. I've also driven in researching this column much of I-465, I-65 and I-70 in Marion County. Manning noted that interstates in urban areas tend to be the worst dumping grounds, and the filthiest spot I've seen anywhere in the state is between the I-65/I-70 north and south splits in Downtown Indy.

So how do we reduce this problem? Well as much as we might like to blame it on passers-through from Kansas or Kentucky, most of the responsibility falls on Hoosiers. We need to develop a deeper pride in our state and a broader concern for our environment. We also need to understand that one small piece of trash adds to a much-larger pile; Manning said that the millions of cigarette butts tossed out of vehicle windows each year are collectively the biggest contributor to roadside litter.

In addition, state leaders need to make cleaning up our roadsides a higher priority. Eric Holcomb often talks about his love of basketball; perhaps the governor could develop his own version of the "Hudnut Hook" for a statewide public service announcement.

But the General Assembly also needs to allocate more money for picking up roadside litter. A cleaner Indiana is worth far more than 65 cents a year per Hoosier.

As I've wandered there and back again through Indiana this year, I've seen a depressing amount of stuff tossed along our highways. I've questioned why anybody would dump, for example, a trash bag stuffed with shredded paper along I-465. I've also asked myself why the person who tossed a deflated kickball along I-65 simply didn't take it and go home.

By the way, the Indiana countryside is gorgeous this time of year. We really do live in a beautiful state. I just wish we didn't have to look past a discarded tire or a dumped Hefty bag to enjoy it.

Somewhere, Iron Eyes is still crying.

Contact Swarens at tim.swarens@indystar.com; friend him on Facebook at Tim Swarens; follow him on Twitter @tswarens.