Sunday, January 24, 2010

Let He Who is With Sin Among You Throw the First Trash from the Car Window

Or, Litter Pickup: January 2010

This weekend was the bi-monthly litter pickup on my neighborhood's main road. Above is yesterday's haul; those 2 miles of road (times 2—each side of the road) were a mess. We were out there for 2 and a half hours! This morning's 2 x 2 miles were not as bad and took only 2 hours, and maybe only took that long because some of us who'd also been out yesterday were jaded and slower today.

It's funny how the litter varies. Sometimes it's mostly alcohol trash—beer cans & bottles, wine bottles, whiskey bottles, cardboard 12-pack holders. Sometimes it's household & construction items—old rags, dryer sheets, drywall, ziploc bags. Always there are pieces of cars—glass, mirror, fiberglass, bumpers—and always packing peanuts.

This weekend's largest contributor was the fast-food industry. We know whence cameth the red straw above and the torn bag below! I'm featuring these Sonic items in honor of my brother, but I do not mean to single him/them out, as all fast-food groups were equally represented in the array of cups, bags, wrappers, and the like: McDonald's, Wendy's, Popeye's, Whataburger, Jack in the Box, Burger King....I could go on and on. I know that fast food doesn't litter, people litter, but to the dispensers of all food, fast and otherwise, I have this to say:

STYROFOAM CUPS SHOULD BE BANNED FROM THE FACE OF THE PLANET. If every person that ever handed out such a cup had to pick up the approximately 157 pieces that are the remnants of each cup, and had to pick up the remains of approximately 47 cups in two hours, and then realized that they could spend the entire weekend picking them up because there are that many cups out there, perhaps they would reconsider their use. When no one picks them up, those little styro pieces stay there for a long, long time.

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