Help create a cleaner community for your friends and neighbors! Join NBC 6 and Shreveport Green for the loveshreveport citywide cleanup on Saturday, April 10 from 8 am to 12 pm.
Register online at ShreveportGreen.org
Litter is an ever-present problem across the country and in the ArkLaTex and impacts our lives in so many ways. Cleaning up litter costs US taxpayers and businesses $11.5 billion each year. That’s money that could have been used to improve roads and communities.
Litter in and alongside the road causes traffic accidents. Each year, hundreds of people in the U.S. are killed as a result of hitting or attempting to avoid motorist-created road debris and litter. Litter impacts your car insurance rates because each year thousands of auto accidents in the U.S. are litter-related.
Highly-littered areas experience more crime and reduced property values. Law enforcement experts say that litter sends a message to would-be criminals that you just don’t care your community. Lesser violations like littering easily pave the way to more serious crimes. Litter in your community also can reduce your property value by as much as 24 percent.
Litter pollutes rivers, creeks, lakes, and streams. Rain carries litter on the ground into local waterways and eventually to oceans where worldwide 9 billion tons of litter winds up every year. Litter doesn’t just disappear. Items like aluminum cans can last 100 years, and plastic bottles just might be around forever.
Litter is a breeding ground for many germs and pathogens. Discarded fast food wrappers are a magnet for mosquitos, flies, roaches, rats, and other animals which carry dangerous vector diseases and spread them directly or indirectly to humans.
