I live on a road that’s fairly busy- it’s kind of an artery through the neighborhood. Fortunately our house is set well back from the road with a line of trees that give us privacy. Unfortunately, maybe that makes people think our front lawn is an empty plot of land curiously well-kept by the township. Or maybe they just don’t give a damn. But I find all kinds of trash thrown out by passing cars all the time.
This past weekend I found a big strewn pile of empty fast food cups, containers and bags, and empty water bottles. Obviously someone did an impromptu car clean out.
Some of the things I’ve found over the years: metal and plastic car parts (the only things I can charitably consider accidentally dropped), tons of fast food waste, candy bar wrappers, hundreds of beer and liquor containers, a 6’ length of plastic tubing recently, plastic bottles filled with brown sludge (presumably chewin’ tobacco spit), and once, a porn DVD.
I have to do a careful sweep of the lawn area by the road before I go over it with the lawn mower. The big liquor bottles are easy to spot, but I’ve pulverized a few tiny airplane- sized bottles with the blades. Metal and hard plastic parts can be hard to spot and will do a number on the blades. And the bottles full of chewing tobacco spit (or worse), well, you sure don’t want to run over them with a mower ( or even worse, a weed whacker).
What are people thinking who throw trash out of their car windows? Do they think magical trash elves clean it up? It pisses me off so much when I see trash, not just on my lawn but anywhere. You go to the beach and the sand is littered with cig butts and bottle tops. I’ve been camping in otherwise pristine wilderness where others have thrown out candy bar wrappers and other trash by the side of the hiking trail. How hard is it to put the wrapper in your pocket until you get to a trash can?? I’m not a huge environmentalist, but it’s really not that hard to find a damn trashcan.
Yup, we’re right near the entrance to a subdivision so we get a lot of the ‘clean out’ trash too as apparently drivers prep for their home arrival. This means beer cans, fast food cups and containers, cigarette butts, etc. I think most of the the water bottles come from walkers. Plastic and cardboard packaging comes from the contractors as they wander around looking for an address or speed by as they use the thoroughfare as a shortcut to another artery. I love our house but hate our location. Next time we’ll buy in a quiet, off the beaten path cul-de-sac.
The worst I’ve seen though was the country home of my grandparents that had a field across the street. Soemone started dumping there, then everyone that saw it followed suit. There’d be bags and bags of trash, tires, sofas, etc and we consistently had to pay to have it hauled off. I remember opening one bag to see if there’s was any identifying mail or anything in there. Sadly, it came from an area church.
I support this pitting 100%. Maybe it’s growing up in the time of Woodsy Owl and the Crying Indian, but littering has pissed me off for as long as I can remember. It’s just a big old “Fuck You!” to everyone in the world who is not the person littering. These self-absorbed, egotistical pricks should be forced to eat whatever they throw out, be it cigarette butts, glass (Yeah! Make them eat glass!!!), or their own dog’s crap they didn’t pick up.
That’s as far as it goes. Out of sight, out of mind. I used to own a pickup truck, and the truck bed was apparently indistinguishable from a trashcan. I caught someone once and confronted him, and he honestly didn’t see the problem. He thought that by not throwing his trash on the ground, he wasn’t littering. Even after I talked to him, I don’t think he really understood that he’s just forced somebody else to dispose of his trash. (And never mind that the truck was parked eight feet from an unlocked dumpster.)
I hate littering with the fire of a thousand suns! Hate it. Hate It. Hate. It. It’s got to be one of the most self absorbed, selfish asshole behaviors of all time.
To quote Bill Bryson, “If you see someone litter; kill them”.
Sounds like you definitely live in a very interesting place with lots of drunks. Might want to put up a camera with time lapse and see if you can start capturing license places and other identifying info and take to local prosecutor or grand jury if prosecutor blows you off. If there’s no litter fine, pester township/county about it. Most local governments are looking for ways to put dough into the coffer, and most don’t think about stuff like this unless it’s a large-scale dumping incident. Littering fines would haul in a ton of $$$.
My house is on a corner on a pretty busy residential road (it’s the only road the goes all the way through the neighborhood), near the top of a hill, but at the intersection the hill levels off, then continues downhill past that. The garbage men tend to dump trash cans into the truck rather haphazardly and frequently when there are random unbagged items in someone’s can, they tend to roll/blow down the street and accumulate on my driveway and lawn, not to mention people just outright littering (there’s a high school down the road and lots of kids walk up my street to get there; I blame them for most of the littering).
My problem is teenagers. The rear of my townhouse backs up onto a public sports park (baseball, soccer, tennis, basketball - it’s actually really cool as a “backyard”). So about ten or fifteen feet behind where my deck ends, there’s a fence, and on the other side some high schoolers have set up a little semi-secluded area where, a few nights a week, they hang out and smoke pot. Secluded from the sports field, but very obvious from my side of the fence. Now, I don’t really care what they’re doing back there - this isn’t a high risk neighborhood, we’re talking middle and upper class stoner kids - but the fact that they routinely leave soda bottles, fast food wrappers, and other trash there annoys the fuck out of me. It’s not even on my property! Littering just really pushes my anger buttons.
Of course, the last thing I want to do is get into any confrontation with high school kids with that much time on their hands: I like my grill and patio set and un-egged windows, thank you very much. But I’m very much in favor of land mines that explode when they sense nearby littering.
We get a lot of roadside littering here in Redneckistan, TN but this thread gives me an idea for a charitable event for our church: Go around a lot of our rural roadsides maybe once a month or 2 & collect trash.
It would help break up the monotony of potluck dinners & lunches for awhile.
Apparently, gardens with lots of flowers are ideal places to do the out of sight, out of mind thing with litter. I find all sorts of garbage in the front one from people too lazy or self centered to take it with them.
for some reason I get cheeto bags. i don’t eat Cheetos, I can’t remember the last time I ate a cheeto and yet I always have a cheeto bag in my trash, recycling bin or on my porch. wtf.
Can I hijack your pit to include people who let their dogs pee on the neighbors’ lawns? Our house, in particular, has no problem because we have pebbles instead of grass because of drought, but there are lots of neighbors where we can see the people walking the dogs, just let them squat right there. They DO pick up feces, but they don’t care what damage the urine does to lawns. There is one house not far from here with an absolutely beautiful, immaculate lawn, with two big yellow spots where the dog urine has killed the grass.
We live on a corner lot, but we’re well within our neighborhood and at least 1/4 mile off the main road. No matter - for whatever reason, our hill seems to be a favorite target of those who want to be rid of their bottles - glass or otherwise. Every time I go out to weed, I find broken glass. It’s rare to mow and not have to stop to pick up bottles.
