The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) is encouraging residents statewide to participate in its annual No Trash November, with the goal of picking up as much litter as possible from Tennessee’s roadways.
“Litter on our public roads is detrimental to safety, the environment, and the economy, while also detracting from Tennessee’s natural beauty,” said TDOT Commissioner Butch Eley in a press release. “We want to ensure our roadways are safe from the harmful effects of litter, especially with the upcoming holidays and increased travel.”
“We are grateful for our many partners across the state that are once again coming together in November to help us in our mission to prevent and reduce litter and look forward to reaching our goal to remove 50,000 pounds of litter from our roadways,” said Brittany Morris of the TDOT Beautification Office in the release. “By working together to improve and beautify communities across the state, we can make an even larger impact.”
Some of those partners include Keep Tennessee Beautiful and Adopt-A-Highway. The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are also partners.
Keep Tennessee Beautiful’s mission is “to educate and inspire Tennesseans to take action every day to improve and beautify their community environment,” according to its website.
It is a state-level affiliate of Keep America Beautiful and is housed at the University of Memphis Center for Regional Economic Enrichment as a community engagement program.
This is the state’s third annual No Trash November, which is a project of Tennessee’s Nobody Trashes Tennessee initiative. TDOT said that in 2022, with the help of 1,300 volunteers at 95 separate events, 48,000 pounds of litter were removed from roadways.
This year, the department is hoping to hit the 50,000-pound mark.
Nobody Trashes Tennessee provides research showing the state’s progress in litter pickup, among other statistics.
For example, it says that litter on Tennessee’s roadways has decreased by 12 percent since 2016 but notes that there are still 88 million pieces of litter on the state’s roadways at any given time.
Plastic is the most littered item in the state, with 37 percent of all littered items coming in that form. Next is paper at 22 percent.
The research also says nearly 50 percent of all trash in Tennessee’s roadways was littered intentionally.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on X / Twitter.
Photo “Picking Up Trash” by Nobody Trashes Tennessee.
