Litter is one of our industrialized, fast-food society’s banes and every year, especially in the spring, some citizens take to the highways, streets, hiking and jogging trails and waterways to cleanup after their fellow citizens who consider the side of the road or creek just another garbage can.

This past weekend, about 50 people took to canoes, kayaks and other small boats to travel down the approximately five miles of Hobolochitto Creek, or Boley Creek as the stream is known locally, between Long Bridge on Beech Street and Burnt Bridge on Burnt Bridge Road just to pick up trash. Many of them came to shore at the end of the trip with their boats pretty well loaded down with the refuse left by others.

The creek cleanup was sponsored by Friends of Boley and is becoming a regular affair as the group tries to improve the beauty of this creek that flows through the county and through Picayune by keeping it clean. The group sponsored a cleanup this past fall along the same five miles of creek, but the actions of others who use the creek caused them to have to come back and do it over again only about six months later.

Friends of Boley would like to expand their efforts to other parts of the creek, but that may require citizens who use the creek to start keeping their litter with them until they can deposit it in a trash can so the group can move on to other parts of the creek that desperately need cleaning also.

This coming weekend, many residents of Picayune will take to the streets in their neighborhoods picking up trash thrown out of car windows, or just dropped on the ground by others on foot. Again, those who are picking up the litter are repeating a process they have done only a short time before because of those who won’t keep their trash with them until they can deposit it properly in a trash can.

Those who spend their spare time cleaning up after others during these events must become awfully dispirited and sad when they travel down the same road or creek a short time later to find that other people have come along behind them and left some more trash.

Also coming this spring and summer is another effort by the Mississippi Department of Transportation to educate children about litter in hopes that they will decide not to litter and will persuade their parents also not to litter.

The Transportation Department is constantly battling litter along the state’s highways and byways, thrown there by uncaring, passing motorists.

Only through the persuasion of us citizens that we should not litter will the scourge of litter be defeated. Hopefully, the Transportation Department’s efforts to educate the young about litter, and to persuade them not to litter, will be successful.

It is only through persuading all of us to put our trash where it properly belongs, or somehow preventing those predisposed to littering from littering, will our roads, streets, creeks and trails become cleaner and as beautiful as they can be without the ugliness of somebody’s trash.

Take part and clean up, and don’t throw down, trash.