During the last Earth Week this year, I had the pleasure of joining The Onondaga County Resource Recovery Association’s (OCRRA) Earth Day Litter Cleanup from the Westcott Community Center. I took multiple trash bags to clean up neighborhoods where students do not make up the majority of residents. I found very little trash, barely filling up one trash bag of the many bags I set out to fill. In a neighborhood whose primary residents are permanent, not students, it is no surprise the neighborhood is kept clean and residents take pride in the places they live year round.

After leaving the outer campus neighborhood with barely any trash, I moved closer to the primary off-campus student housing near Euclid Avenue. Along sidewalks, in certain yards and dotting wooded spaces, I found an abundance of trash. A lot of it included discarded beer cans, bottles and plastics. Despite trash receptacles at the end of some driveways for pickup, within feet of them lay more waste.

The contrast between neighborhoods composed of permanent residents and student-rental properties is evident. If we have Orange pride on campus, why don’t students leave the places they live clean from litter?

Litter in off-campus neighborhoods arises from issues ranging from poor party etiquette and a culture based around mass consumption to a lack of trash and recycling receptacles provided by landlords.

Off-campus properties are largely the centers for SU’s party culture which generates substantial amounts of waste. The red Solo cup, a staple of the party scene, is emblematic of a broader culture based on deflecting personal waste accountability and massive consumption of single-use plastics.

An estimated 583 billion plastic bottles were created in 2021. Oftentimes, they do not end up in the recycling, but rather in landfills or on the lawns of off-campus homes.

Intoxicated students ritually throw their red Solo cups directly on the ground. In the mornings afterward, lawns are often covered in waste which, if not cleaned up immediately, ends up in the woods next door and seemingly becomes someone else’s problem. That someone else often is the people who live in Syracuse neighborhoods year round.

Will Wallak, a public information officer for OCRRA reported that OCRRA’s Earth Day Cleanup collected 33.59 tons (or 67,190lbs) of trash across Onondaga County. Thirteen tons of the trash were from Syracuse alone.

While students are to blame for much of the litter, the public and private trash and recycling bins intended to keep neighborhoods clean are often overfilled. Trash and recyclables are ending up in the areas I had to help clean, not in the receptacles where they should have been properly disposed of.

Audrey Liebhaber, a junior environmental engineering major at SU and off-campus property renter, attributes the issue of litter to landlords offering sub-par trash and recycling receptacles with no lids. “We don’t have a way of disposing of our trash in a way that’s guaranteed it won’t fly away,” Liebhaber said.

The insufficient bins are not just limited to Liebhaber’s apartment. On windy days, broken bins without lids have trash blowing away across Euclid Avenue. For recycling, Syracuse provides blue bins with no cap which extends the issue to recyclables which are often light enough to be blown away in a strong wind gust. The bins appear designed for more indoor use than to be left on the street corner for pickup.

Liebhaber offers a potential solution to this issue. “There needs to be a more uniform trash or trash can system in the student neighborhood, or the streets will continue to fill with trash.”

That waste gets blown away and ends up in neighboring lots where it lies until people come to clean it. Wallak said this issue of litter is the “personal responsibility” of students and they can take it on themselves to keep their off-campus neighborhoods clean.

His sentiments are backed by studies showing the potential for individual action regarding litter. In a 2020 study conducted by Keep America Beautiful, an estimated 50 billion pieces of trash litter the U.S.’s roadways and waterways, which equates to 152 pieces of litter per U.S. resident. Although the first number seems grand, the second reminds people that if each person pulls their weight, the country’s problem with litter becomes more manageable, according to the report.

“People can visualize 152 pieces of litter where they live, and they can begin to see that the litter problem can be solved,” the report reads.

Community cleanups remain an important response to cleaning up less-accountable people’s litter, but it does not solve the litter problem. Less than two weeks after Earth Day, the areas I helped clean are once again scattered with litter, highlighting the sheer amount of waste generated by the community and the need for regular cleanups.

Students need to be more cognizant of their off-campus neighbors and their environmental impact. To incentivize better practices, landlords and the city of Syracuse should implement more efficient recycling and trash options for near-campus communities. In addition, landlords near the campus community need to hold their tenants more accountable for litter that ultimately ends up polluting the neighborhoods. These simple fixes can build stronger relationships with our off-campus neighbors while creating neighborhoods that all students and residents can be proud of.

Harrison Vogt is a junior environment sustainability policy and communication and rhetorical studies dual major. His column appears biweekly. He can be reached at hevogt@syr.edu. He can be followed on Twitter at @VogtHarrison.

Published on May 4, 2022 at 1:25 am