The idea is so obvious and clever, you wonder why this kind of thing isn’t everywhere: children’s poems about our troubled planet, urging us to keep it clean. Or cleaner, anyways. Starting with litter.
Kerry Adams Hapner, Cultural Affairs Director for San Jose, explained that Litter-ature, as the program is called, cultivated then featured 10 winning poems on 500 trash cans in 17 different business improvement districts around the city,
“We have a call to action. It’s our youth that recognizes we have to change. Otherwise, we’re going to lose different parts of this beautiful earth.”

Hundreds of middle and high school students sent in more than 300 short poems. Then, a panel of judges led by Santa Clara County’s Poet Laureate Mike McGee sorted through all of it: thoughtful, anguished, half-hearted, even funny.
“We sweated over the fact we could only pick 10. It was really hard,” he said, adding, “Kids are thinking about their environment, because they’re seeing adults not doing anything about it.”