My house is on a street corner; the road that runs along the side of the house is reasonably busy. So, we get a fair amount of trash that accumulates, particularly along that side of the yard; a lot of it appears to be stuff that’s being thrown out of the windows of cars: beer cans, little single-serve liquor bottles, fast-food bags, etc.
I usually walk the yard at least once a week to clean things up, typically as a prelude to doing yardwork. This year, I haven’t had to do that as much; I’ve hired a lawn service to mow and trim for the first time, and they pick things up as part of their weekly mowing service.
I live next to a high school so I occasionally go there to walk the dogs when school is not in session.
I have to be extra vigilant about the trash we come upon because the amount of wrapped sandwiches/hot dogs/burritos laying about in a school parking lot is absurd. There’s been more than a few times that people have witnessed a frumpy lady prying her dog’s mouth open to extract a foil-wrapped burrito!
The front lawn area in front of my apartment complex has litter dumped on it by random passers-by at least a couple times a week (beer bottles, food wrappers, etc). Since the apartment manager or my fellow residents don’t seem up to it I’m, the one who picks most of it up.
I’ll pick up small bits of trail litter when I’m hiking, but only what I can fit comfortably in my pocket.
I rarely get trash on my lawn and it’s always something that was blown in on the wind. So if I see it, I go pick it up.
The exception is stuff leftover from renovations. After I got a new roof, I spent weeks picking up small, green, plastic disks that were apparently part of the packaging for shingles. Also, small chunks of wood and roof material are still popping up next to my shed where the fascia and soffits had to be fixed after Ian.
I will occasionally pick up a piece of trash on the sidewalk or neighbors lawn if it is a single piece. It’s a rare thing, though, since my neighbors also keep their yards trash free. Even the ones with shitty lawns.
I rarely get trash on my property and will pick it up as soon as detected. I also pick up trash while walking my dog and drop it in the next trash can (I know where the nearest one is at all times because, well, I am walking my dog, and ya need to know this). I pick up dangerous debris from the bike lane while riding my bike (screws, nails, shards, rocks). If it is too big for my pocket I will just toss it well off the road.
I occasionally go out with a grabber and some large plastic trash bags and do a thorough clean-up on a specific area I observed while walking, such as a wooded area next to one of our neighborhood parks or along one of our bike trails. This is best to do around this time of year when everything is dried-up and the goats have trimmed back all the underbrush.
For about a year while I was working out of state, my wife had an apt across the street from some forest preserves. There was always plenty of trash in the forest preserves. When I visited over the weekends, my practice was to walk the dog in the forest preserves, pick up a plastic grocery bag that was lying around, and pick up trash until I had filled the bag. Sadly, I never needed to bring my own bag.
We have both a McD’s and a BK a couple of blocks from us. At least 1-2 weekends a month, there will be a bag of fast food trash in our street. I have a hard time imagining that mindset. Occasionally there will be a sack of empty beer bottles/cans. In THAT case, I can at least understand the folk who are driving and drinking don’t want to be caught with a bunch of empties in their car.
I live across the street from an elementary school, so I often get bits of trash in my front yard, and pick it up. Not tons, but still some, mostly wrappers.
When I lived in NJ my work did adopt-a-road for Route 206 north of Princeton. Tons of trash there. Even some interesting stuff.
I tend to find a lot of trash by the street where I live that would only be appropriate to describe in the Pit. I pick it up gingerly with PPE, doing it so it doesn’t disgust passersby.
Now that you mention it, I have picked up enough littered fishing line to qualify. When I was a kid learning to fish, I left plenty of line littered by accident from sunken snags, tree intercepts, whoppers that got away, etc. So I dispose of line I spot near ponds and rivers and stuff nowadays.
I live in an urban area (well, Vermont urban), and will often end up with items of trash in our small front yard/flower beds.
I admit to sometimes leaving those items for weeks because of an emotional “this is not my trash” response. I know that no one else will take care of it but me, but in the moment of decision-making I just feel obstinate. I have a hard enough motivating to clean things that I’ve caused! Eventually I do throw them out, but maybe I could be the OP’s neighbor… empty energy drink can just sitting on the retaining wall for half the summer.
We live across the street from an elementary school and often take the dog for walks in their ball field after school gets out. I’m actually quite surprised at how little litter there is when we go on these walks. Once in a very great while we’ll find a candy wrapper or empty sandwich baggie, but really that’s quite rare. When we find some we of course pick it up and stick it in the poo bag.
Whenever I find a piece of trash on my property I collect it immediately. I can’t imagine letting such a thing just sit. I’ll pick it up if it’s in the street in front of my house as well. If it’s on someone else’s property, that’s their business. It’s ugly and I don’t like it, but it’s not my issue. I find the occasional scrap of paper or candy wrapper on my property and, curiously, an occasional golf ball. I have never been able to figure out where those come from, or why. I found a disposable mask on my lawn a week or so ago. They all get picked up and put in the outside trash can, with the exception of the very first golf ball I found in my lawn which is sitting in one of the flowerpots on the front porch.
I have family that live in absolute filth with acres of property strewn with literal garbage and trash as well as the usual assortment of dead vehicles and other mechanical junk. Acres of it. I can’t even comprehend the head space someone must be in to think that’s an acceptable way to live but clearly, some people do.
When I walk in the woods around our home I’ll occasionally find some detritus that I pick up and take home. Nine times out of ten it is a dog toy that one of our pack got tired of carrying.
I didn’t see it the first time, can you please post the Craigslist ad again?
A buddy of mine grew up in a house that backs to a busy Catholic parisg K-8 parking lot/schoolyard with backboards and baselines painted and host to a few hundred kids a day, most days for recess & gym/PE. He said there’d be dozens of everything you’d expect, every week: kickballs, 16" softballs, frisbees, bookbags, action figures, windshield wipers, missalettes, discarded lunch items, possibly squirrel-carried at time.