Most Visible Pollution Is Mess Citizens Make

feo si ■ H sv FROM appearances anyway, more and more people are asking what they can do, individually and in groups, to ñght pcllution and save the environment. That shows a healthy concern and let's hope it isn't a temporary, faddish sort of thing. There IS something Americans can do right away, and that is to stop the highly visible kind of pollution that every American is guilty of at one time or 'another. Litter pollution is inescapable. Even dirty air and foul water are subtle next to roadside beer cans, curbside paper wrappers and every imaginable kind of throwaway. And unlike some other kinds of pollution, any number can particípate at litter:ing. Statistics embellish the I story. The cost of removing I litter is $500 million annuI ally. Half a billion dollars, lif you please. Every month I American motorists drop an l average of 1,304 pieces of I litter on every mile of the country's network of 1 mary highways, or nearly I 16.000 pieces of litter per I mile per year. Overnight we could wipe I out a $500-million annual I debt. All it would take to I realize this overnight 1 ings would be restraint and I a little thoughtfulness. # THE MICHIGAN House has passed, 88-7, a bilí that would allow courts to impose I a three-day trash gathering I sentence on violators of I ter laws. Although littering I now is a misdemeanor I ishable by a fine, the bill would allow judges to expand the sentence to include three eight-hour days of picking up trash. Now, whether this is cruel I and unusual punishment (and t h e r e b y prohibited I under the state Constitution) I is a matter for the courts. I But as Rep. Loren Anderson I of Pontiac said: "We've got I to get rid of this notion that I you pay the allmighty dollar in a fine and get rld of your responsibility to society." Right on, sir.