Littering: Good or Bad?

When we focus our attention on environmental problems, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by their scale. How big a problem is climate change? Global. Wow, that's about as big as it gets. Some problems seem impossibly complex and solutions, even if they exist, seem outrageously expensive.

However, it can help to get some perspective. We have curbside recycling. Thirty years ago everything went in the trash. The hole in the ozone layer is repairing itself, thanks to the Montreal Protocol.

And here's what Peter Hessler writes in the New Yorker about working for the Peace Corps in China in 1996:

Most of us taught at small colleges in remote cities, and there wasn't much direct contact with the Peace Corps. Only occasionally did a curriculum request filter down from the top, like the campaign for Green English. This was a worldwide project: the Peace Corps wanted educational volunteers to incorporate environmental themes into their teaching. One of my peers in China started modestly, with a debate about whether littering was bad or good. This split the class right down the middle. A number of students argued passionately that lots of Chinese people were employed in picking up garbage, and if there wasn't any litter they would lose their jobs. How would people eat when all the trash was gone?