You Can Help Eliminate Litter

Litter is our most visible sign of pollution. Litter is unsightly and dangerous. It can cause injury to people and wildlife. It encourages pest animals as well as the spread of germs and disease.

Littering is a crime.  Litterers can be fined up to $500, sent to jail for 12 months, or both. This applies to littering along highways or streets, in rivers or streams, or on any public or private property.

Litter is a problem that affects everyone in our community. Litter creates ugliness in public places including streets, parks and waterways, and it impacts real estate values. Litter kills aquatic life and decreases oxygen levels when it decays in water. Most litter should be recycled, which protects our environment and saves our natural resources.

Who wants to look at litter on our roads and streets? Litter is more than ugly—it's harmful to our waterways including lakes, rivers and beaches. Many people don't know that litter and pollution from our streets and yards can wind up in the storm drains. While the storm drains are meant to carry clean rainwater off the roads, any litter and debris that ends up in them can flow directly into creeks and bay This means that the water we swim in, sail in and surf in can get more and more polluted with each piece of litter that is tossed onto the roadways. State-wide, Caltrans spends $41,000,000 on litter removal: Road Patrol/Pickup-$9,800,000, Sweeping-$13,400,000, Litter Pick Up-$18,000,000. Their campaign Don’t Trash California and California es tu casa. No hagas de ella un basurero. The California Water Quality Control Board also has a litter program to Erase the Waste.

Different materials decompose at different rates. Cigarette butts, which comprise up to 40% or our litter, are not biodegradable. In fact, the acetate filters take many years to decompose. Wind and rain carry cigarettes into the water supply, where the toxic chemicals trapped in the filter leak out into aquatic ecosystems, threatening water quality and marine life. Cigarette butts may seem small, but with several trillion butts littered every year they are the number one source of litter in this county. For more, go to www.cigarettelitter.com

You can help eliminate litter (Usted Puede Ayudar a Eliminar  la Basura)

  • Set a good example and put litter in its place
  • Remind others not to litter
  • Keep your property clean
  • Pick up litter
  • Bag your trash securely
  • Recycle as much as possible -- cans and bottles, mixed and colored paper, magazines and newspapers, cardboard and plastic
  • Don't put your trash out earlier than necessary
  • Carefully handle household chemicals, motor oil, anti-freeze, mercury, batteries, and paint.  Call the Household Hazardous Waste Disposal Facility at 800-646-1431
  • Consider Adopt-a-Street in your neighborhood
  • Move your cars and remind your neighbors on sweeping day
  • Join your neighborhood partnership group

Littering and illegal dumping are a problem in virtually all areas of our community. Last year, our street sweepers picked up more than 5,000 cubic yards of litter from City of Concord streets.  Our three-pronged approach is to: (1) avoid littering in City of Concord parks, facilities, and programs, (2) prevent littering by others through education and enforcement,  and (3) pick up litter already in the environment through an aggressive street sweeping program.