Admitting that Lyndon Johnson is one of my favorite presidents has
never gotten me anything but strange looks from both Democrats and
Republicans.
One of my fondest memories of the Johnson administration was not the
Vietnam War, the civil rights act or the war on poverty. It was the first
lady's war on litter. In almost no time flat, the president's wife, Lady
Bird Johnson, made public sloth seem to the rest of us to be a capital
offense.
The name of the campaign was Keep America Beautiful, and it was
thriving long before anyone heard of the organizations that sprouted
during the nation's green years in the late '60s and early '70s. The
campaign headed by Lady Bird Johnson made a deep impression upon my
generation, most of whom still consider littering an unspeakable act.
Fortunately, most of us are passing our hatred of litter on to our
children, securing at least another generation of litter vigilantes. But
apparently Newport Beach has found that some people never got the benefit
of the Keep America Beautiful campaign because they're just too young or
they're old enough to have forgotten it.
Newport Beach has found out the hard way that litter is disgusting
and, unless it is controlled, it is costly too. So the city is
contemplating stamping into the sand a friendly message to visitors to
put their trash in a trash can on their way back to their cars. The
patented roller would be dragged behind the beach-cleaning machines that
scrub the shore each day.
I like this idea, mostly because it's environmentally friendly and
it's not a heavy-handed approach to the problem. But I still had some
questions, which the city's general services manager, Dave Niederhaus,
was only too happy to answer.
Niederhaus says the amount of litter rises and falls with the amount
of education the public receives. So how did they find out about the
stamping device?
"We saw this company advertised in one of our trade magazines," he
said. "They had never even thought of coming to the West Coast until we
invited them out here."
So why not just put out more trash cans? That's what they do at
Disneyland, where trash disposal is a science. Trash cans at the Magic
Kingdom are placed about every 20 feet, giving the potential litterbug no
excuse to drop trash on the ground. That strategy, plus a small army of
"sweepers" keeps the grounds spotless.
"Those trash cans have to be emptied by a really expensive person who
has just a really small [area] to move around out there," Niederhaus
