How to change behavior

Signage does not help. You have to change their attitude. Which I don’t have the answer how. I built and help maintain a disc golf course in a city park in White Bear Lake. We have battled littering since day one. We have signage saying “pack in pack out”, “no littering” and the like. We even have garbage cans on EVERY HOLE. Still there is garbage thrown around. Even within feet from the garbage cans. In my mind the only thing we can do is educate when we see it happening and HOPE they get the point and change. Otherwise all we can do is keep picking up after these lazy slobs.

There is hope. My 6 year old granddaughter lectured me for throwing an Apple core out the truck window. She was right and I thanked her for knowing the difference between right and wrong. These kids get it- now the rest of us need to learn right from wrong.

pool2fool wrote:

Very frustrating. I don’t know the answer, but I also know it’s too easy to say “Gee there’s no simple answer here…”

I’ve thought about starting an Adopt-a-River chapter thru the Conservation Corps. This used to be run by the MN DNR but it’s transitioned solely to CC I think.

If anyone here is interested in banding together to form an IDO team for any certain area, it could be a good way to work together. I would be very interested in creating a team for pool 2 — or even just a certain section — to start.

Love the idea. I also live in St. Paul. No shortage of trash along the Hidden falls shoreline. I’d be down to getting something started with you in the area!

This problem sucks and it’s been around forever and talked about multiple times a year on these forums, but it’s good to see all the positive reactions from people on here. I’ve spitballed ideas and here are some thoughts of mine:

1. Insanely jack up the fine. Make it like $10,000. Yeah that’s pretty extreme, but I don’t have any intention of violating it so I shouldn’t have to worry about it. Maybe it can get more specific, such as that much money near a waterway or something.

2. Maybe a TIP line like for suspected poachers?

What 1 & 2 have in common is deterrence. Whether you’re talking about littering or terrorism, one thing that helps prevent humans from doing bad things is deterrence. If people feel like they will face meaningful ramifications for doing something wrong they may not do it.

3. Increased DNR presence and enforcement. Yeah, I know. DNR cost money and that money comes from our paychecks, sales tax, etc. (I never said this list is 100% realistic). I’m guessing the DNR are overworked and overstretched, but in a perfect world they’d be able to catch more of these things and be a deterrent.

4. Find a way to reward cleaning up. I believe it was Rochester a few years back that suggested putting a 5-cent deposit on each cigarette sold. Because it’s a deposit, you can turn butts in and get that money back. So a) people shouldn’t want to litter because they’re throwing their own money away and/or b) others may be inclined to pick up after others and cash in on that deposit money. Lower-income people could have a heyday searching for cigarette butts.

Just some thoughts. I hate when problems seem like a dead end, I’d like to think something can be done about them.

I teach art so i know about mess-You made the mess now clean it up! They get that but it has to be said over and over. Look at the floor by your table! They then see the mess on the floor but that has to be repeated too.Can they transfer what they learn with me to other places? Maybe, maybe not. The feeling of ownership helps-if you own it or you feel you are part of a group that owns it you will take care of it. If a person or group feels disconnected from the community don’t be so quick to blame them-ask why they are somehow blocked and how you could help.
My two pennies

“3. Increased DNR presence and enforcement. Yeah, I know. DNR cost money and that money comes from our paychecks, sales tax, etc. (I never said this list is 100% realistic). I’m guessing the DNR are overworked and overstretched, but in a perfect world they’d be able to catch more of these things and be a deterrent.”

This option is actually not that far fetched. The DNR only spends about 7% of their budget on enforcement, a number that I think would surprise many.

https://files.dnr.state.mn.us/aboutdnr/budget/fy18-19-graph.pdf

The only thing you can do is to lead by example.

Pick up your own trash, and even some that isn’t yours.

Teach your kids or grandkids the same thing, and hopefully they will pass along the same good habits.

On Labor Day we spent a relaxing day at the Coon Rapids Dam. My three year old twin boys watched me pick up a few pieces of trash that weren’t ours. I didn’t say a word to them about it, or why I was doing it. Without hesitation they started their own scavenger hunt for garbage lol

We left the river bank cleaner than we found it.

Careful b-man, more times than I can remember I’ve bumped into needles on the ground.

nhamm wrote:

Careful b-man, more times than I can remember I’ve bumped into needles on the ground.

Jesus…..Where do you fish???

I guess if your fishing grounds are filled with herion addicts you probably have more to worry about than a few beer cans and worm containers.

Needles were mainly from coon rapids dam down to st.anthony.

If a person wants to know how much junk goes in our waters as well as along the shores, take a walk on a lake just before the ice starts to get bad.

For a couple years I hosted a winter clean-up on Foster-Ahrends Lake in Rochester. Local sores donated gloves, huge 80 gallon trash bags, Hot Dogs, Chips, charcoal and starter. A local tackle shop or two donated ice fishing tackle and rods/reels as give-aways for kids involved. All we had to do was get the bagged garbage to the parking lots and stack the bags by the park’s dumpsters and the Park Department took care of it. These event drew from 20 to thirty people, many were adults with their kids.

Its insane what we’d find to put in the bags. Of course there were cans and bottles and paper crap of all sorts, but women’s underwear was popular and were used condoms. Syringes were common. Line…tons of line. Lures. One young fella grabbed a bag and it had a pile of small tackle in it along with a receipt from Gander Mountain totaling over $80.00….quite a find for a 9year-old. Money…I could never believe the money we found frozen in the ice. Then there were the cigarette butts and sunflower seed hulls. Tobacco splats were everywhere. These clean-ups got a lot of this stuff put in the parking lot, but imagine all the water that does NOT get cleaned up before the thaw. We also picked up shoreline trash.

Its a sad fact that a large portion of the angling public is creating a real mess and it appears that they could give a rip. Its been mentioned that educating by example is one way to help inform people and its been mentioned that just taking time to bag up some crap when you leave will help. How true. It would be helpful if a law were passed that allowed well-meaning anglers to thoroughly throttle some a$$hole seen openly littering….maybe someday, eh. I also think that much of the summer-time trash on shorelines is not put there at the hands of anglers. But today’s wonderful population can be un-trustable so I guess if you see someone of a party with a mess around them just call the cops, maybe get a picture showing faces and the mess if you can do it without getting shot or stabbed.