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At Hogansville’s City Council retreat last week, the council discussed instilling community pride to reduce the litter problem. They may try to copy the City of LaGrange, which hosts a monthly litter cleanup with volunteers and city employees.

Also last week, the Troup County Sheriff’s Office, Georgia State Patrol and the Troup County Marshal’s Office teamed up to educate the public about litter.

Officers handed out fliers to residents to inform them about securing their trash when taking it to the dump. Trash bags in pickup trucks often are not tightly secured, leading to trash being blown out onto the road.

And in today’s e-edition, you may have read about Chattahoochee Riverkeeper installing a trash trap on Dixie Creek and Blue Johns Creek.

We’re glad to see that people in our community — citizens, local government and law enforcement ¬— are doing what they can to reduce the litter problem.

Trash and roadside litter are a frequent complaint among residents. We hear it from our readers, and we hear it being talked about at government meetings and in our day-to-day conversations.

There’s a pretty simple solution to the problem, which is for people to stop mindlessly chucking cups, bottles, bags and other junk out their car windows. It’s really not hard to hold onto it until you reach your destination.

Unfortunately, there will always be people who litter. For whatever reason, for some people, the beauty of our community and the health of our ecosystems are not a consideration.

We encourage you not to be one of those people. If you’re a parent, we hope you teach your kids the same thing.

We also hope that, if you’ve got the time, you join some of these community efforts to pick up trash.

We’re not sure what the best solution is to litter beyond educating people and picking it up. Law enforcement has more important things to worry about, but fines seem appropriate if they do witness littering.

We welcome suggestions for addressing this issue, and we encourage everyone to keep working to get a handle on the litter issue. 

And please, don’t litter.