You’d be amazed at what people throw away. Some of it is pretty normal — candy wrappers, for instance — but Larie’s found driver’s licenses and credit cards, too. She turns them in, of course. She also picks up aluminum cans, which are sold for recycling (the money goes to a local food pantry).

Larie has a condition known as aortic stenosis. One of the valves out of her heart doesn’t work quite right. But the daily exercise is great for her.

As she and her dad walked to his work every day in Story City, Iowa, they’d pick up any litter they’d come across.

“I think about my dad a lot when I’m walking,” Larie told the Northwest Herald. “I think about how proud he would be that I’m still picking up litter, all these years later.”

Now, years later, this particular walk started as Larie going to meet her granddaughter Kate’s middle-school bus.

Because we could certainly use them. If you’re a neat freak like me, you might not want to read this next sentence.

According to Keep America Beautiful, the average mile of roadway in the United States has over 6,500 pieces of litter on it.

That’s more than one piece per foot! All together, that adds up to more than 50 billion styrofoam 44-ounce soda cups, grease-stained fast food bags, and cigarette butts mucking up our beautiful country.

“There’s AAA research that shows that people have accidents as a result of litter,” said Cecile Carson, senior director of affiliate development at Keep America Beautiful, a nonprofit dedicated to making littering unacceptable. 

If a piece of trash flies out of the back of a pickup truck, for example, it could hit another car and cause a crash.

Of course, litter hurts the environment, too. Broken glass and bits of metal can cut people and pets. Plastic and cigarette butts end up in animals’ stomachs. And anything on the road can end up in our water supply.

“Everything leads downstream,” said Cecile.

Keep America Beautiful has done a lot of research on this fact, and they say the problem is mostly individual people’s behavior.

“Littered environments attract more litter,” said Mike Rosen, a senior VP at Keep America Beautiful. “So if you can decrease the amount of visible litter, you can begin to change attitudes and change behaviors.”

Before and after a cleanup. I wouldn’t want to walk down “before,” but I’d be real happy to have “after” in my neighborhood. Image used with permission from Keep America Beautiful.

Furthermore, if people see their neighbors and community members making an effort to go out and clean up, that also makes people think twice before littering.

“It personalizes it,” said Cecile. A litterer might say, “Oh, that’s the Kiwanis Club, that’s the 4-H – I’m not going to litter on those people.”

Image used with permission from Keep America Beautiful.

It’s one thing to decry litter and trash, but it’s quite another to go out and do something about it yourself. Larie’s already inspired others in her community to pick up junk as they walk too, but imagine what America’s streets would look like if everyone were as dedicated as Larie.

“I just like seeing the parks and streets cleaner,” Larie said. “I don’t like litter; I never have.