The cost to the county is minimal because the county only provides bags and safety gear.īut roads in the Adopt-A-Spot program must be approved because some roads are too dangerous for anyone to be on, she said. Crews pick up an estimated 100 bags of trash in a year, she said. CONTRIBUTEDĭana Doll, manager for Environmental Services in Greene County, said the county uses volunteer crews to clean up county and township roads. ODOT crews pick up trash along I-75 in Moraine on Friday, March 12. When storm drains get clogged with litter and a heavy rainfall happens, the roads are more likely to flood. On I-75 through downtown in Dayton, the highway is drained in the median. “That’s free.”īruning said there can be an environmental cost to throwing trash out the window too. “The cheapest solution is just not to litter in the first place,” Bruning said. But even then, the state still pays for trash bags, he said. He said another option to clean up the roads is the Adopt-A-Highway program, where volunteers go out and pick up trash along the highway.
The state then has to pay for the costs of guards for the prisoners and a portable toilet, since prisoners can’t just go to a gas station. The state does use inmate labor to clean up trash, he said, but that isn’t free.
ODOT spent about 151,410 hours cleaning up trash last year in Ohio, Bruning said. Since many of the people picking up litter are ODOT employees, Bruning says picking up litter keeps them from tasks such as filling potholes and mowing grass in the summer.