Litter- Trash Stats in Oklahoma

• Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) spends more than $4 million per year to pick up litter.

• It costs more than $63 per mile for state highway departments to remove litter.

• Roughly 55 percent of all littering occurs along rural and urban

• There are more than 1,000 Adopt-A-Highway volunteer groups- picking up litter 4x per year

Litter Hotlines

• To report litterers, Oklahomans can call 1 -888-5-LITTER.

www.okladot.state.ok.us/public-info/beauty/hotline.htm

Free Litter Bags

• Free dashboard litter bags and bumper stickers are available from Keep Our Land Grand.Contact the Beautification Office at (405)521-4037, or email requests to: beauty@odot.org.

Trash Cop Program.

The Central Oklahoma Trash Cop Program, which consists of environmental officers hired to catch and prosecute litterers and illegal dumpers in four counties, was begun with $160,000 obtained through fundraising efforts by a local community group, Oklahoma City Beautiful. The program will be sustained by fines collected from offenders.

Fines

• Littering is against the law and litterers can be fined from $200 to $2,000. Highway litter makes our roadsides unattractive and costs Oklahoma taxpayers millions each year to clean it up. Join the many Oklahomans working hard to keep our land grand!

Illegal Dumping

• Oklahoma has more than 2,400 illegal dumps.

• County commissioners estimate the one-time cleanup cost for illegal dumps is $4 million.

• 2007- Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality has documented at least 100 Illegal Tire Dumps- approx. 36,000 tires

• $1.00 per new tire sold is added on to the price of tires to help pay for illegal disposal of tires.

The Oklahoma Waste Tire Recycling Indemnity Fund (the Fund) www.sai.ok.gov/Search%20Reports/database/OKWasteTireRec07.pdf was created in 1989 to clean up historical tire dumps and to prevent further illegal dumping by providing a monetary incentive to promote proper disposal.   The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the Oklahoma Tax Commission (OTC) are jointly responsible for the administration of the Waste Tire Recycling Act.  The DEQ is responsible for permitting and certifying waste tire facilities.  The OTC is responsible for establishing and publicizing rules that pertain to the remittance of fees and the allocation of monies accruing in the Waste Tire Recycling Indemnity Fund.  According to a presentation to the
Oklahoma Waste Tire Task Force by the DEQ’s executive director on September 27, 2007, approximately 4.6
million tires have been removed from illegal tire dumps since 1990, with approximately 350,000 tires still
remaining.