A certain type of litter is becoming increasingly common in the post-pandemic world: gloves, masks and all kinds of personal protective equipment.
Now, Boca Raton is among the first municipalities in Florida to increase fines for littering PPE and walking away: $250.
Boca Raton City Council member Andy Thomson introduced the ordinance after noticing how much trash he saw on his daily run.
“A mask is totally different in nature because it's not just disrespectful, it's dangerous. You're putting the burden on someone else to have to clean up after your potential biohazard mess. Rather than just lecturing people about how it's bad to litter, we let people know if you're going to be doing this, you face a ticket that you're not going to enjoy having to pay,” Thomson said.
His mission is to run all of Boca’s city streets cleaning up trash along the way.
“So far, I've picked up 260 pounds of trash and 308 pieces of PPE. It got to the point where it was getting to be so many that I had to actually carry a separate bag for the PPE as we were picking it up. Nowadays, what I do is when I'm done I have a luggage scale that weighs how much exactly how much the trash is,” Thomson said.
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