What is it with people? Seriously! Tucker and I went out last weekend to clean up our ditches and discard of the trash that has accumulated there over Winter. Now let me tell you, we live in the country on a moderately busy road at best. And look at the trash in these ditches!There were two good things about this experience. The first is that it quickly taught my 3 year-old son why littering is a really bad idea. Having to clean up other's people junk really sheds light on the fact that he should avoid doing this himself at any cost. The second is that there was less trash then last year by one shopping bag, little victories.
One observation Tuck and I made is that if one had to form a profile of the average litterer on our stretch of road, the person would be gluttonous. Our trash bags were made up of cigarette boxes and butts, alcohol and soda bottles, tobacco cans, and fast food bags.
I know we aren't alone. I recently counted 17 plastic bags per mile along the expressway in rural Indiana. Has anyone found a way to deter this? Good experiences with ditch litter? Bad?
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5 comments:
i once watched in horror while a man pulled over and dumped his trash from his car into a ditch by the road. i wrote down his license number and called the police. luckily i lived in a small town where the police didnt have much to do and so they came and found the guy and it turned out he was a TEACHER. kudos to you for picking up the stuff yourself.. we have to patrol our little stretch of heaven every few weeks as well... sigh.
We occassionally cleaned up the ditches on our road when Jeff and Kristin still lived at home, when we found large items we moved them to the edge of the road if we could and notified the road commission to pick them up, which they did(tires,chair etc). Two bad experiences, poison ivy, both Jeff and Shintaro, one of our exchange students!But overall, a good exp. to know we helped clean where we live! A Karen
We participated in a creek clean-up yesterday, and like you I was astounded at the amount of trash (and poison ivy)...this creek is adjacent to an area that has recently been under construction and is now an outdoor shopping mall with a multitude of restaraunts so our trash was quite varied! I must say though that it gave me a new appreciation for the amount of plastic existing in our environment. And an even stronger commitment to eliminating it as much as possible from our lives.
Don’t get me started on cigarette butts ;-) It really is amazing how much trash there is on the side of the roads. Good for you helping to clean it up! I need to go out again and clean another street.
We have a lot of neighborhood people who carry bags when they take their daily walks and load them up with trash. I've heard the road-side trash is much worse in the country and people out there regularly dump all their trash in ditches, including large and small appliances. What's that Lou Reed song? Oh yeah, "Last Great American Whale."
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