Editors, Vineyard Gazette;
Over the past three days I have found the following litter on Church street in Vineyard Haven where I live and in the adjacent tennis court parking lot and grounds: cigarette butts, candy wrappers, three watermelon rinds, three plastic Stop & Shop take-away boxes (two in a parking space and one on my doorstep), a nicotine-containing cardboard box, top of a tin can, used Q-tips, used tissues and numerous unidentifiable bits of paper.
This is not atypical. I find at least five cigarette butts in the gutter every day; people leave their empty drink containers on the ground outside the tennis court frequently.
Much of this looks very purposefully placed outside a parked car, making it someone else’s job to discard. You can’t blame the tourists. They left. This problem is ours – people who don’t live on my street and therefore don’t view my street as part of their community. After a chat with personnel at the public works office I felt even more discouraged because (a) more public trash bins just encourage people to fill them with household waste to avoid paying for trash removal, and (b) anti-littering signs are worthless because it’s hard to observe or pursue litterers.
I would urge everyone who visits or lives on this beautiful Island to contribute to its beauty in the tiny gesture of appropriately disposing of their own trash.
Antoinette Peters
Vineyard Haven