Littering

The view from atop Signal Hill may be too appealing for its own good. The city's 360-foot-high plateau, with its scenic vista of Long Beach and much of southeast Los Angeles County, has long been a popular spot for sightseers. Unfortunately, litterbugs seem to have taken a liking to it too. "The hilltop is a beautiful place to park one's car and enjoy a lunch with a view. Unfortunately, many choose to leave their trash behind," a recent report by city staff said.

As Glen and Sue Hanket walked across parts of United States this summer picking up roadside trash, their most common finds were fast-food bags, cigarette butts, soda and beer cans and underwear. That's right--undershorts, panties, bras, negligees, you name it, all strewn on the highway. "Every two or three days we'd find some G-string, boxer short or bra lying on the side of the road," Glen Hanket said. "We never could figure out where it came from.

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.

Robert Salz, a tourist from Berkeley, thought he knew everything Southern California had to offer until he came upon the glittering apparition by the side of the Golden State Freeway. Dangling from the branches of a tall locust tree in Castaic are 11,281 glass bottles that shimmer in the sunlight and tinkle in the nearly incessant wind.

Volunteers bearing trash bags and paint brushes will descend upon a Canyon Country neighborhood Saturday for a cleanup sponsored by a local citizens group. Litter and graffiti are the targets at Canyon High School, Sierra Vista Junior High School, North Oaks Park and other areas around Whites Canyon Road. The event is organized by United Mothers of Santa Clarita.

There are too many butts on the beach, and Mike Beuerlein thinks it's disgusting. He means discarded cigarette butts, by far the single-most common piece of garbage polluting Orange County's shoreline last September, when the 11th annual International Coastal Cleanup took place. There was more. Besides more than 14,800 cigarettes, volunteers cleaned up 62 syringes, 60 tampon applicators, 60 condoms and more than 45,000 other trash items. "That's disgusting.

Sure, it's not all literature. But attorneys are ready to argue whether the cascade of dry-cleaning fliers, pizza coupons and free newspapers left on porches and doorknobs are junk or protected free speech. Pasadena's City Council declared them disposable earlier this year, outlawing the delivery of unsolicited fliers and papers to property owners who say they don't want them.

Whenever I have guests in my car, they remark about how clean I keep the interior. It's not rocket science. Whenever I have any trash, I just chuck it out the window. Paper wrappers, empty coffee cups and wads of unpaid parking tickets can create a real mess in the front seat and reflect badly on my character. So I just roll down the window and say good riddance as that stuff floats away. It's not just paper either. After finishing a beer, I promptly toss the bottle or can out the window, too.

Cleaning crews celebrated the fifth of July by picking up trash--49 tons of it--from Los Angeles County beaches. Animal shelters marked the day after Independence Day by trying to find the owners of dogs picked up after fleeing noisy fireworks. And a few county residents spent the day nursing injuries from illegal fireworks. But authorities reported no major injuries or accidents during the traditional night of patriotic revelry. By 5 a.m.