It’s just a fast food wrapper, a cigarette butt, an apple core. No big deal, right? Wrong. Litter affects everyone in Arizona. It not only costs Maricopa County taxpayers $5 million every year to clean up roadways, litter is harmful to the environment and to our health.
- More than 118,000 bags of litter were picked up from Valley freeways in 2021. More than 425 bags of litter are removed each weekday from Valley freeways, totaling about 1.6 million pounds of litter each year.
- Debris on freeways causes 51,000 accidents in the U.S. every year, injuring nearly 10,000.
- 45% of litter is accidental and comes from debris falling from trucks or from other unsecured loads.
- Road Debris accounted for 1,075 accidents and seven deaths in 2020 (information courtesy AZDPS).
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