Litter on the Road--It Just Bugs Expert

On a drizzly winter afternoon Dan Syrek stalks the edge of a city street, sloshing through mud puddles and dodging chuckholes, when he spots a piece of plastic sheeting beneath a bush. He clicks a hand counter to record the finding.

A few feet away he spots a few shards of plaster. Click. A large sheet of cardboard. Click. Scattered pieces of wood. Click.

To the uninitiated, the items being recorded are merely trash, the random detritus of a mobile society. But to litter expert Syrek, they represent a significant trend.

The plastic sheeting, the cardboard and the plaster are categorized by Syrek as “accidental litter,” items that he assumes flew off the beds of uncovered pickup trucks. So for the next 10 minutes, to confirm his litter hypothesis, he studies the traffic flow.

His hypothesis is confirmed. About 15% of all vehicles traveling on this particular street are uncovered pickup trucks--an unusually high percentage.

“Encourage more truck drivers around here to put covers on the backs of their trucks,” Syrek says, “and you’ll cut litter on this street significantly.”

Syrek, widely viewed as the nation’s foremost authority on roadside litter, is the man that communities turn to when they have a litter problem.

When highway officials in Texas wanted to reduce the state’s roadside litter, they called Syrek. He spent months spying on Texas litterers and determined who was doing most of the littering (18- to 34-year-old men), and where (rural highways). The state then knew who to design their anti-litter campaign for and where to place the ads.

In Hawaii, Syrek discovered that tourists did much of their littering at roadside spots with sweeping ocean views. The state placed trash cans at these spots and significantly cut litter.

And in Washington state, he helped officials cut down on accidental litter by suggesting that public landfills charge owners of uncovered pickup trucks double the standard dumping fee.

“Syrek’s unique in his field--he’s the only full-time independent litter consultant around,” said Don Clark, a director for the Texas State Highway Department. “When we were looking for someone to help us with our litter program, I asked around to other states and everyone gave Syrek high marks.”

Syrek has conducted litter studies in 17 states and three Canadian provinces. Based on his research, he has little good to say about his home state’s litter-control efforts. He has determined that while California is the leader in many environmental areas, it is sadly deficient in its litter program.

“When I go around the country doing work, I’m embarrassed to tell people I live in California,” says Syrek. “We’re got a real litter problem here.”

The amount of litter in California has gone up about 25% in the last decade, Syrek said, while state funding for cleaning up litter has dropped. With environmental issues such as global warming, oil spills and toxic chemicals dominating the news, the environmental community in California has neglected the growing litter problem, Syrek says.

When asked why litter is so important, Syrek bristles. The man who has made litter his life’s work holds out a forefinger and begins listing the ways litter plagues society.

“Litter is expensive--the cleanup bill in California is at least $100 million a year. Litter diverts resources--people employed to clean up litter could be doing other important things. Litter affects property values--nobody wants to live in a neighborhood filled with broken bottles and fast-food wrappers.”

After 17 years as a full-time litter consultant, Syrek still has not lost his enthusiasm for roadside refuse. He talks tirelessly, hour after hour, in a manner closer to a monologue than a conversation, about accidental litter, accumulated litter, fresh litter, visible litter and total litter.

The office in his Sacramento home is filled with 300 computer disks containing litter data and dozens of folders jammed with litter charts, litter graphs and litter reports that he has written, such as “Summary of Recent Developments in Litter Control,” and “Changes in Visible Litter since 1985.”

Syrek becomes irritated when litter is referred to as trash or garbage or junk.

“Trash,” he said, scowling, “is a very poor word. Trash is what’s in a trash can. Garbage is related to food. Junk is something like an old car.”

Fixing a visitor with an intent stare, he declares somberly: “What is litter? Litter is solid waste in the wrong place.”

Syrek has dozens of arcane litter statistics at his disposal. During the course of a conversation, he said that 27% of all litter is from fast-food restaurants. Littering declines 50% in the rain. Seventy-five percent of all litterers are male. Animals tipping over trash cans represent 1.1% of the nation’s total litter.

Syrek’s plethora of litter data enabled Texas highway officials to devise one of the nation’s most successful litter programs. In the mid-1980s, Texas was spending $20 million a year cleaning up roadside litter, and the amount was increasing by $3 million a year.

Based on Syrek’s data, Texas designed a campaign that reduced litter from 1985 to 1989 by 60%, saving the state millions of dollars, said Clark, the Texas highway official.

In the past, most anti-litter ads politely asked people not to litter, Syrek said, and featured cute little animals. But the typical litterer in Texas, Syrek determined, would not be influenced by this approach.

“We’re talking about a guy named ‘Bubba,’ who drives a pickup truck, watches football all day and drinks a lot of beer . . . in short a total slob,” Syrek said. “. . . If this guy sees a billboard with a cute little owl asking him not to litter, he’ll throw a beer can at it.”

So Texas devised a macho advertising campaign with the menacing slogan, “Don’t Mess With Texas.” It featured professional football players such as Ed (Too Tall) Jones and gravel-voiced country-Western singers. The program was so successful that Oklahoma soon launched a similar campaign with another no-nonsense slogan: “Don’t lay that trash on Oklahoma.”

Syrek, who has an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering, was working for a research foundation near Sacramento in the early 1970s when he was named project manager of a litter survey. By the time the survey was completed, Syrek was so fascinated by the many facets of litter that he entered the field full time.

“I saw at once that this was a field where no serious scientific research had ever been done . . . it was virgin territory,” Syrek said, eyes shining. “And unlike most scientific fields, I didn’t need any expensive laboratory equipment. With litter, you just go out on the street and count it.”

Now he earns about $50,000 a year as a litter consultant and has more work than he can handle. He has already agreed to conduct litter surveys this year in Louisiana, Florida, Minnesota and Alberta, Canada.

Syrek, small and intense, wears a yellow hard hat and orange fluorescent vest while conducting litter surveys. On a recent afternoon, as he was preparing for a litter count at an empty lot in North Sacramento, he turned to a visitor and said, “Don’t say anything until I’m through counting. I’ve got to concentrate.”

Since 1981, he has been monitoring seven sites in Sacramento for litter trends. In addition to charting standard litter data, Syrek also feels he is on the cutting edge of societal behavior. He said he was among the first to know that condom use had risen sharply. He knows cigarette consumption is down because he finds fewer empty packs. And he knows all about the crack epidemic from the thousands of small plastic bags he finds in the streets.

He is constantly amused by the love notes he finds during his litter patrols and he stores them all in a file folder. They range from the torrid--an assignation note blown off a windshield--to the ebullient--”I’m so glad I met you, baby”--and the poignant--a letter from a boy to his girlfriend’s mother, conveying his honorable intentions and his hope that the mother would no longer try to keep them apart. Syrek found the letter torn in half, unopened.

“These little slices of life, these random samples of America make my work interesting,” Syrek said. “Most scientists are stuck in their cubicles all day, but I enjoy being able to get out of the office for my research. And, you know,” he said earnestly, “you can really learn a lot about a place through its litter.”