This week I laid out a plan for addressing illegal garbage dumping in the borough: To launch an education campaign and have the government buy pre-paid orange landfill bags for folks who need help affording their trash bill.
My wealthy, educated white friends were aghast. Use my tax dollars to subsidize miscreants who foul our valley and flout our laws? Never! Are you crazy, they said.
No, I’m not crazy, I’m a politician and politics — as much as we might hate the word — is the art of what’s possible. It’s not the art of perfect. It’s not the art of justice or righteousness or even goodness. It’s the art of getting something done under a system that’s based on the premise that we can govern ourselves. That’s all it is.
For years we’ve suffered from folks illegally dumping garbage around Haines. This problem exists because we give people a choice on what to do with their trash — dispose of it responsibly at our privately owned landfill and non-profit recycler, or chuck it in a ditch.
Our government could get rid of that choice simply by taking over garbage collection and paying for it by adding the cost to your property tax. Most of us don’t like that idea because most of us handle our garbage responsibly and at relatively low cost.
If a person composts, recycles and separates their trash, the cost of disposal isn’t terrible. But as in any system, some folks duck responsibility, break the rules and create a problem.
For generations, our general approach to rule-breaking has been to investigate, prosecute and punish rule-breakers. Hey, we’re a Christian culture. Bringing down God’s wrath on the wicked appeals to us.
But let’s step back and see how well that works in actual practice with garbage dumping. Local governments have tried prosecuting illegal dumping for decades. It hasn’t worked. The valley is too big and the police are too few.
Enforcement often doesn’t work. Also, it creates a cat-and-mouse game where the wicked become more clever and the rest of us spend more money on more cats to chase the mice. And the most clever mouse becomes a hero to his fellow mice.
A pile of legitimate research has proved that when it comes to modifying people’s behavior, pressure, education and provision of alternatives works better than traditional enforcement.
So let’s start an education program in the schools teaching children that garbage dumping is bad for us, and for our town and for wild animals. Start a publicity campaign. A TV commercial showing a weeping Indian paddling down a river full of trash taught many youngster of my generation not to litter. Certainly our town has a few Alaska Natives we could recruit to drive home that message.
Finally, let’s make it easy for people to choose proper behavior by offering pre-paid garbage bags. Once a person gets into the habit of going to the dump, they’re prone to feel better about themselves. As feeling good feels good, soon those same folks will be paying their own way and bragging about it.
Oh, I expect an uproar of opposition against my idea, including from folks who believe in evil and punishment and an eye-for-an-eye and the rest of that Old Testament stuff, including that evil-doers are incorrigible.
Step away from that thinking for just a minute. Consider that people are basically good but sometimes exhibit bad behavior. And consider how else we might change bad behavior, acknowledging that what we’ve done for decades hasn’t worked.