This Morning Messing With Washington Led Me To Mess With Texas Litter

This morning I was searching for images of Washington to put on a Washington webpage. This search for images led me to read an article about Washington in which I learned that something called the American State Litter Scorecard had somehow ranked the 50 states, litter-wise.

Washington was the least littered state. The most littered states included the one I am currently living in.

I copied a paragraph about the Litter Scorecard...

"The 2011 American State Litter Scorecard," ranking the fifty United States on overall quality/effectiveness of public spaces cleanliness and related environmental performances, was presented at the American Society for Public Administration National Conference in Baltimore by Steve Spacek. Best states include Washington (top), California, Iowa, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Oregon, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and New York--most located in New England or Far West regions of the United States. Worst states include Kentucky (bottom), Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Alabama, Indiana, Georgia, Illinois, Oklahoma, Montana, North Dakota and Texas -- most located in the South, Central United States or Sun Belt regions.

After reading Texas was one of the worst states, litter-wise, I Googled "Texas Litter" looking for a Texas litter image. I saw one I liked and was then surprised to see where it came from.

Me.

A Texas litter picture I'd taken a couple years ago at Fort Worth's Oakland Lake Park and used in a blogging titled An Amazing Amount Of Litter Indicates It Is Perfectly Okay To Mess With Texas, that you see screencapped above.

Reading Mess With Texas whilst Googling for Texas litter brought me to a Wikipedia article titled Don't Mess with Texas in which I learned the following....

The phrase Don't Mess with Texas is a trademark of the Texas Department of Transportation, which began as part of a statewide advertising campaign started in 1986. The intention behind the Don't Mess with Texas campaign was to reduce littering on Texas roadways and has garnered statewide attention.

The phrase "Don't Mess with Texas" was prominently shown on road signs on major highways, television, radio and in print advertisements. The campaign is credited with reducing litter on Texas highways roughly 72% between 1986 and 1990. The campaign's target market was 18-35 year old males, which was statistically shown to be the most likely to litter. While the slogan was originally not intended to become a statewide cultural icon, it did.

The Don't Mess with Texas anti-litter campaign brought about a 72% reduction of litter on Texas highways?

This campaign ended in 1990? Has the Texas litter level maintained that 72% reduction? Or in the 23 years since 1990 have those littering 18-35 year old Texas males reverted to their pre-Don't Mess with Texas ways? I can't imagine the Texas roadside litter levels being 72% worse than what we see in 2013

Very perplexing.

If you have ever had the pleasure of taking a roadtrip out of Texas, heading northwest, or west, you will likely have noticed that the decrease in roadside litter starts being very noticeable by the time you reach Colorado. Or New Mexico.

Do Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon and Washington have significantly fewer 18-35 year old males than Texas? Is that why those states are so noticeably less littered?

Again. Very perplexing...