Babylon's Hilarious New Commercial About Littering Is Worth Watching

BABYLON, NY — Littering isn't funny, but the Town of Babylon's new satirical commercial sure is.

It features compulsive litterers working through their littering addictions at a fictional Litterers Anonymous meeting. While one person pours his heart out about the thrill of tossing trash onto a vacant lot, another admits she couldn't resist tossing a dirty diaper out of her car.

The commercial is produced by the Town as part of Operation CLEAN, a program aiming to organize community-led cleanups and emphasizes consequences for litterers.

But at a recent press conference announcing the program, Town Supervisor Rich Schaffer said true change comes from changing people's habits.

"We had tried out some facets of Operation Clean in 2023 and had great success," Schaffer said. "But we wanted to formalize it and come up with a way to help not only in terms of cleaning up, but enforce, educate and change people's mindset about how they need to care for their community."

With the commercials, filmed by Cooper Productions, the Town took a humorous approach to spreading the message, which was Schaffer's idea, according to Ryan Bonner, the Town's Director of Communications.

Schaffer says the trash around Babylon isn't just the typical litter like cigarette butts and fast food wrappers.

"We've found some of the weirdest things being thrown away by selfish neighbors and friends who don't know how to care for our community," Schaffer said.

To combat the problem, the Town also established a Litter Enforcement Team, which works to catch litterers red-handed and has already assisted with the cleanup of over 100 locations.

Anyone caught littering will face a fine of up to $1,000 for a first offense.

Earlier this month, a town's Litter Response Team tackled Straight Path and 6th Street in West Babylon and collected 72 tons of litter and debris—enough to fill two and a half garbage trucks and is equal to the weight of 19 elephants.