Dear editor,

It’s cool that the mayor has offered a warm welcome to Pullman for incoming students, but maybe other year-round citizens need to offer a different kind of welcome, one that begs students not to completely trash the city—literally—during their stay.

Another school year at WSU is about to start, which means not just an increase in population, but also an increase in trash everywhere.

Apartment parking lots have dumpster after dumpster overflowing with cardboard boxes and plastic bags all marked to go to the landfill. On windy days, anything not inside a closed dumpster gets blown around the parking lot to sidewalks, roads, fields, and nearby waterways. It’s a dystopian mess.

Nearly all of these apartment complexes don’t have recycling bins, which would be a nice alternative to throwing away cardboard and other recyclables and would free up space in dumpsters.

In May, when students are leaving, the problem is reversed: cardboard boxes and plastic wrappings are scarce, but the dumpsters are overflowing with the household items those packages once contained like lamps, televisions, tables, chairs, couches, mattresses, dressers, clothes, etc. It’s sad to see such waste hanging out by the dumpsters for weeks after the big move-out date.

Incoming and outgoing students, please consider the image you are projecting onto Pullman and the impact you are having on our local environment. Feel empowered to do something—anything—to help keep trash contained and leave Pullman better than you found it, or at least not worse.

-Katie Anderson, Concerned Citizen