I drive a lot, and I am constantly appauled by the amount of garbage that lines our nation’s highways. I cringe when I see people throw bags of trash out their window right into the road ( which I see maybe…5-6 times a year ) and want to run those assholes off the road. I wouldn’t dream of throwing trash out the window- not napkins or bags or cans or straws or anything else.
The question is this: The other day I was eating a chicken leg while driving, and when I was finished, I tossed the bone out the window. My wife looked at me and asked “Why are you littering?” I was stumped. The thing is, I don’t think that I was. I will throw old foodstuffs out the window time to time. Chicken bones, that last little bit of bun left after the hamburger’s gone, the peel of an orange…out the window they go. I figure that these items are part of nature’s food chain and will be snapped up quickly by seagulls and other scavengers. ( I see this happening all the time ) My question then is this: IYHO, am I littering when I throw a chicken bone out the window, knowing full well that it will be scavenged by another creature within a day? ( please note also that I wouldn’t do this in a parking lot or a residential neighborhood, I’m talking about places where the road runs through woods. )
Orange peels do not degrade to any meaningful degree. Throw one out and it’s still lying there ten years from now.
You probably take mental comfort from the thought that what you’re throwing out is a) bio-degradable b) not easily seen and c) real small. Rather lame, though understanable arguments, concerning littering.
If you have chicken bones then you’ve most likely got the chicken bone container/box/bag it came in with you. So dispose of the whole thing in one fell swoop and stop hosing the roadsides. They have all the crap they need already.
A police officer friend of mine has a policy on littering I like. If it wasn’t laying on the road before you drove by, it shouldn’t be on the road after you drive by.
Many folks consider food items and such as “okay” to throw out the window of a car because it is either biodegradable or wild animals will eat it. Unfortunatley, this also leads to many of the dead animals we see along the sides of the roads, which I consider an eyesore as much as any other litter.
My cars are a mess because I do not want anybody to think of me as a litterbug.
I, unfortunately, see lots of people in, certain sections of town, just toss their entire fast food bag out the window, or just drop it on the sidewalk even if they are just several feet from a trash can - WTF!?!
racer72, good point about the wild animals. I do dump ice so that I can just toss the empty cup in the back of the car/truck - don’t believe I’m hurting anything by doing that - I’d hope your cop friend would not have a problem with that.
The only thing I dump out of my car is the contents of a can or cup that I’m finished with…soda, water, coffee, etc…so I can keep the container in my car until I find a trashcan, without having it leak all over my car.
I do, however, toss cookie and bread crumbs on the ground at a park/outdoor patio restaurant if there are birds nearby. I love sparrows.
[slight hijack]
My dad is an incurable litterbug. Always has been. Whatever’s in the car is out the window…soda cans, papers, wrappers, bottles…you name it, it’s out the window. (God, this used to drive me nuts when I was a kid! I was so ashamed!)
Well, a couple of years ago, when was driving by himself, he finished a bottle of IBC rootbeer and decided to pitch it out the passenger side window…which is usually open b/c he smokes and likes to keep a “good air flow.”
The window was only halfway down; he threw the bottle directly at the window, and the window and bottle both exploded. Glass shattered all over the seat of the car, slashing his upholstery and basically ruining his whole day.
Cost him $270 to have that window replaced.
I laughed like a maniac when he told me this story, and told him he shouldn’t have expected to escape his karma forever.
So could you throw a dead animal out the window? like a dead insect, or a mouse, something like that? I mean, I’m not talking about a cat, or an ostrich, or a wildabeest, just the smaller, more helpless of our brethern.
I don’t have a cite, but if the orange peel was bio-degraded, you wouldn’t see it any more. Right? Bio-degraded means it’d be gone.
I think what you’re seeing is just old, dried-up orange peels.
(or, as Martha Stewart would put it, Organic Potpourri!)
I don’t see anything wrong with pitching a bit of hamburger and bun or an apple core, because I know those will be eaten be various scavengers, but I don’t know about chicken bones. What animal eats greasy chicken bones?
Find a trash can.
Gee, I guess the Compost Fairy must visit my backyard and wave a wand over that pile of orange peels, vegetable scraps, leaves, etc. I better fire her ass, because it takes a couple months before most of it breaks down. What a slacker!
Think about it: If things like orange peels, leaves, dead trees, etc., did not degrade, we’d be up to our eyeballs in organic matter. Thankfully, we have insects and bacteria. Even the dreaded termite serves a purpose in nature.
I assumed he meant partially rotted orange peel. Is that right?
Surely woods have always been littered with bones and peels and stuff?
If something will, in fact, turn into compost, it seems a lot better to drop it somewhere where it’ll rot undisturbed for a bit, and become useful, than cart it off to a landfill.
As for the thread topic, I’d save chicken bones for the garbage. However, I don’t find it wrong to throw the remains of food away in a wooded area, so long as no one saw you doing it - they may not know what you’re tossing, and assume it’s regular garbage. If they even care to begin with.
Weirddave, I’m also stunned at the amount of garbage that lines our roadways. These people wouldn’t throw this crap in their own backyards, but it’s ok to toss the remnants of a Happy Meal out their car window?
I see a lot of people toss garbage (including cigarette butts - that’s littering too) and I notice the vehicles. It astounds me how many people with religious bumper stickers, or Jesus fish emblems, have no regard for the world that their God created. Someone needs to add an eleventh commandment for them: Thou shalt not litter.
Yes, it’s littering. Its throwing your garbage out of your car window. You can rationalize that it decays in time, and feeds animals but then all we have is rotten food lining the roadway (it stinks when its in my garbage, I doubt it’s better on the side of the road) along with animals attracted to a road where they can get killed.
Although I don’t like it when pedestrians throw cigarette butts on the ground, I have to admit that I kind of like to see people throwing cigarettes from a moving car at night. The burning tobacco scatters everywhere; it’s like a tiny fireworks show in the middle of the road. Kind of cool.
Some environments are very conducive to things rotting–like my compost pile. But the side of the road isn’t a compost pile. Things will rot eventually, but it will take a lot longer because there isn’t a concentration of the fungi and bacteria needed. Plus, wild animals may eat the items, but I doubt the remains of a KFC extra-crispy leg is an appropriate foodstuff for these animals.
I have to disagree with you, Shade. I’m an avid composter. Almost fanatical. But throwing stuff on the ground isn’t composting. Waste should be dealt with appropriately, and throwing it out of your car isn’t appropriate. Better it should be landfilled than on the side of the road. And yes, if I eat a banana in the car, I keep the peel until I get home and chuck it in the composter. (Assuming I’m going home that day! I said I was almost fanatical, not truly fanatical.)
Maybe we should have a composting thread. I love to talk about my compost.
And you don’t put cooked meat wastes in compost piles, right?
Just vegtable and other organic stuff.
Coffee grounds, egg shells, yard clippings, things like that. No meat or bones or fatty products.
Littering laws do not apply to non-foodstuff items only - it’s everything.
Since my husband and I ride motorycles, I can state from experience that ANYTHING thrown out of a moving car can be dangerous! A chicken bone striking my helmet would rattle me, perhaps loosing control in a worse-case scenario…
Yes, that’s right. Technically, you can put that stuff in, but it attracts pests and I think it may decompose differently or something. I’ve never read anything that recommends it.
