Last Stop on 25-City Don't Mess with Texas Road Tour
- 09.02.03
One hundred thousand people. 5,000 miles. 5,000 signed pledges. These are some of the big results generated by one of the state's largest litter-prevention efforts in history.
As a crowd of cheering supporters welcomed home the 2003 Don't Mess with Texas Road Tour at the Texas Capitol September 2, organizers were busy crunching the numbers to determine the tour's effect on roadside litter in Texas.
"When you consider the number of people who attended our events, read about them in the paper or heard about them on the news, more than 4 million people were touched by our litter-prevention message," TxDOT Travel Division Director Doris Howdeshell said during the Capitol wrap-up event. "Not to mention the millions of people who saw the Road Tour truck driving around Texas all summer. This Tour made a Texas-size splash."
The first-ever Don't Mess with Texas Road Tour hit the highway Memorial Day Weekend in a truck full of prizes and litter-prevention games like litter basketball and a trash trivia contest. "By playing the games or even just watching, people learned about the impact of litter on our state," Howdeshell said. "And the best part is they had fun doing it." The Road Tour was created to appeal to the state's worst litterers, 16- to 24-year-olds.
Don't Mess with Texas Road Tour Results
The Road Tour:
Logged 5,000 miles during its three-month journey across Texas
Visited 25 cities
Appeared at 42 concerts, festivals and popular youth hangouts
Collected more than 4,000 signed pledges from Texans promising not to litter
Distributed more than 20,000 Don't Mess with Texas litterbags
Generated 226 newspaper, radio and TV news stories
The Road Tour is the biggest litter-prevention effort the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has undertaken since launching the Don't Mess with Texas campaign in 1986. While the Don't Mess with Texas campaign has helped reduce roadside litter by 52 percent in Texas since 1995, 1 billion pieces of litter still accumulate each year. Cleaning up the mess cost the state's taxpayers approximately $32 million last year alone.
"That money could be used to maintain our highways instead," Texas Transportation Commissioner John Johnson told reporters. "Litter is ugly and expensive, so we need to educate the younger generation about this problem through creative initiatives like the Don?t Mess with Texas Road Tour."
Road Tour Tactics
To accomplish this, the Road Tour took a 24-foot truck emblazoned with statistics like, "You'd need 13,128 trucks like this to haul away all the litter dropped on Texas highways every year." The tour made stops at events ranging from a Tejano concert in Laredo to a goat cook-off in Brady.
At each event, crews unloaded a basketball court complete with "litter balls" and a game show stage for testing litter trivia knowledge. The games were so popular, contestants often had to wait in line to play and compete for giveaways like Don't Mess with Texas T-shirts. Everyone left with an important parting gift—a car litterbag.
Road Tour Crew
A panel of young adults called the Don't Mess with Texas Ground Support helped TxDOT design every aspect of the Road Tour and attended the summer's events to talk to their peers about littering. "The Ground Support told us peer-to-peer interaction is one of the most effective ways to get young people to stop littering," Howdeshell said. "The Road Tour was an ideal way to create such conversations all over the state."
"Littering isn't something people my age think about very often," said Rhys Southan, a Ground Support member in Austin. "But once we got them playing some of the games, they really got interested in learning about the litter problem. We didn't lecture them, we just hung out and had fun. Hopefully we sparked some new thinking that will lead to smarter choices."
Road Tour Partners
Dairy Queen and LaQuinta helped TxDOT cover the cost of the Road Tour. As campaign partners, Dairy Queen sponsored the popular litter basketball game, which was demonstrated on the Capitol steps Tuesday. Dairy Queen also provided T-shirts, other game prizes and complimentary food at several of the tour stops. LaQuinta sponsored the litter trivia game and donated hotel rooms for tour staff.
Event attendees who pledged not to litter on Texas highways were also entered into a drawing for free LaQuinta hotel stays, an H-E-B gift certificate, an airline voucher or mountain bikes. Texans can still take the pledge and enter the drawing online through September 11.
Don't Mess With Texas Tour Stops
May 24-25 Austin
June 1 Dallas
June 6-7 Fort Worth
June 13 Childress
June 14 Wichita Falls
June 21 Amarillo
June 26 Paris
June 27 Texarkana
June 28 Tyler
June 29 Waco
July 4 Bryan
July 5 Houston
July 6-7 San Antonio
July 12 Victoria
July 13 Corpus Christi
July 19 Pharr
July 23 Laredo
July 26 Beaumont
August 2 Lufkin
August 10 El Paso
August 16-17 San Angelo
August 20 Lubbock
August 23-24 Odessa
August 30 Brownwood
August 31 Abilene
September 2 Austin
TxDOT's Don't Mess with Texas litter prevention campaign has been educating Texans about litter prevention since 1986. For more information, visit www.dontmesswithtexas.org.
