Littering (A big problem near my place)

[Ash]

A few months ago, my apartment complex had new landlords take over.
Up until then, this particular group of apartments had a rather bad reputation.
It's on one of the nicest sides of town, but the old landlords got into the habit of renting apartments to anyone.
Needless to say, they let a lot of scummy people in.  Crackheads, meth makers, gang members, you name it, they rented to them.
So for a long time, this complex was called the mini ghetto by a lot of residents.
The apartments themselves are quite nice.

The new landlords took over and immediately got busy kicking all the trash out.
So far, they've done a pretty good job.  There are still some questionable people here, though.
These people don't seem to have any pride in where they live.
They throw litter everywhere.  There is trash and garbage everywhere you look.  I've looked out my window and have seen people throw garbage out of their cars as they're getting out of them.  They simply do not care.

Snow has covered most of the ground until recently.  When it melted, I was shocked by what I saw.
Take a moment to look at these pictures I took earlier. 

You'll want to click on them to see them in full size because the thumbnails don't let you see the litter in detail.













As you can see, the litter near my residence is out of control.
The complex where I live is huge.  There are at least 15-20 buildings and the litter is bad everywhere.  I looked around and the area by my building is the worst.

I've tried contacting the landlords about this and they don't seem to care.
It's come to the point where I'm considering calling the city on them.
I assumed that since they were so diligent on kicking out the human trash, they'd be just as good about cleaing up the actual trash.  Not so.

I'm responsible when it comes to cleaning up in front of my door area, but no matter how many times I do, my idiot neighbors just throw out more trash.
Check out this picture...  This is right in front of my door.  I picked up all the litter a few days ago and now look at it:

(that's my car on the left)



I'm at my wits end.
What can be done about this?  Anyone know what city dept. I could call to get something done about this mess?
Most states will issue heavy fines to those who litter.  Can the landlord be held responsible for this?

What do you think?

[trekgeezer]

I live in the country on a county road and it gets pretty bad, especially beer cans and plastic bags.  I'm constantly picking up beer cans out of my front yard.

They bring out a load of county prisoners about three times a year or so to pick up the litter, but it doesn't take long for it to build up again.

[Raffine]

When I was living out in the  middle of nowhere it was always surprising the amount of littr that wound up on our road. There were only three houses on a mile stretch, with the road coming to a dead end in front of our place. There was still always McDonald's bags, Mt. Dew bottles, etc. littering the road, which we'd pick up ourselves.

[Jack]

Hey Ash, better to light a candle than curse the darkness!

Yeah, I know, you wanna punch me 

[akiratubo]

Shoot the litterbugs.  You know you want to.

[Mr. DS]

Ok in all seriousness, people shouldn't litter.  I've seen idiots dump piles of garbage out of their car and drive away. 

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

Ash,
 Maybe there are other decent folks who are sick of it too.  Put a flyer up on the mailboxes with a spam-catcher e-mail (what with the human trash and all) and see if anyone is interested in organiziing a clean up.  Its hokey, but I have read where grafitti removal plans are the best way to remove grafitti.  Or move.
-Ed

[Torgo]

I've never littered and I don't understand people that choose to do so. I mean, is it that hard to just keep a trash can/bag in your car to put stuff in?

[Psycho Circus]

The people on my street put all their crap in my trash! When theirs (and mine) is full, it just gets dumped on the ground. I left for work yesterday morning and there was beer cans all over the place, an the guy who used to live nextdoor constantly threw out furniture. He would leave stuff right outside my door, kids would drag it all around the street and the area's caretaker thought it was me!! I never litter at all.

[Ash]

What bothers me the most about it is that it makes me ashamed.
I'm ashamed when I drive into my parking lot and see all the crap lying everywhere.
I'm ashamed when I have friends over and find myself apologizing constantly for the litter.

I want to pick it all up, go into the worst offender's apartments and dump it all out on their living room floors.

One of my neighbors saw me taking those pictures the other day and asked me what I was doing.
I told her and she said that she's been living here for over 10 years and nothing has ever been done about it.
I told her that was all about to change.
While I'm here, this place will be clean and these people will get off their asses and clean up after themselves.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

Thats really cool Ash. 
-Ed

[CheezeFlixz]

Don't take this the wrong way, but why don't you just pick it up? Sure it's not your's but it bothers you, fix it.

I don't understand the need to complain about something if you're not going to take a active roll in remedying the problem. I have a lot of road frontage, over a mile and I get trash along it, not that much but some. It's on the state easement and I could wait for the state to pick it up every year or so or I can do it myself and not have to look at it. I mean if i see trash in a parking lot I'll pick it up as I walk into or out of a store and put it in the trashcan.
You never know there might be others in the complex that feel the same way and help you, if not you've made the planet a little bit cleaner.

[ghouck]

I hate littering, mainly because it seems so unnecessary. We get quite a bit of it up here and usually it's blamed on the tourists, , but in all reality it's usually someone from Alaska that does it.

[Jack]

You could put up some notices announcing "Apartment Cleanup Day", then at least a few people might show up to help pick up the litter.  Hopefully the litterers would see this and think twice before tossing stuff on the ground in the future.  At least you'd probably get some more people involved and maybe create an anti-litter atmosphere in the complex.

[Ash]

When I told the landlord that I was going to bring the city into it, they must've believed me because there's a team of men going around picking up trash.
They haven't gotten to my area yet, but hopefully they will soon.  

I think what I'll do now is write up some kind of anonymous note asking everyone to not litter and to please clean it up if they see any.  I'll stick one on everyone's door.
It probably won't do any good, but it's better than nothing.