Our Cabin in on a remote 8 mile stretch of country road and it is over 30 miles from the nearest KFC, Burger King, or McDonalds. It is beyond my reasoning to imagine how French fry and burger boxes along with various wrappers and empty drink cups continually litter that stretch of roadway. :-\
Magicman,I'm about 20 miles and I'm trying to figure out the same thing. I seem to pick something up every few weeks. I live on a dead end road with about 6 houses above me. I will have to do my yearly pick up along the road when the snow melts down on the main road. I do about 1000 feet each way. It just looks better.
Quote from: Magicman on February 13, 2013, 08:12:57 AM
Our Cabin in on a remote 8 mile stretch of country road and it is over 30 miles from the nearest KFC, Burger King, or McDonalds. It is beyond my reasoning to imagine how French fry and burger boxes along with various wrappers and empty drink cups continually litter that stretch of roadway. :-\
Burglars have to eat too.
It must be the same reasoning that compels some local inconsiderate to bring his household garbage, construction debris, broken TV, etc and dump it in the ditch near my house at night. I've picked up that person's trash way too many times already. Litter looks bad, no questions about it.
I have about 10 gas tanks to get rid of now. :o My wife saw them first. Both of us only saw 3-4 tanks. Than I got out of the car and the pile grew. Once someone left 2 tires right in view of the house. If they would of gone down the road about 50 feet, there's enough trees too hide the house.
We've delt with dat same quick food trash on our road too. It's a rare trip dat I don't see some. >:(
There should be a hefty return deposit on all wrappers and containers from dem quick food joints. Dat way when I pick up all dat trash on my way home I can make a couple of bucks. Sum days I'd get rich. :-\
I have that here a beer can or two, one time I had some junk in my drive way, I look at it and the guys name was in the junk, Well I called him right up to come and get it,when he got here, smiley_furious3 I can't say or repeat on the FF, but he wont be back ;D
i have the same problem here, but i know who throws all the fast food wrappers out, and they get them back in their yard about once a year, all at once. usually good for about 11 months. as for house hold trash i pile it all out in the county road and light it on fire, had a few folks concerned until i offered to bring it down to their property.
Is roadside litter just a fast food issue, what about all the feed bags that blow off the farm rigs and wind up against the fences, all of it is awful.
I once got a ticket that I shouldn't have got in a little po-dunk town because the cops and judge we crooked. For a couple years I would clean out my truck as I drove past the courthouse parking lot. I was a little immature back then but it made me feel better each time I did. Me and my brother have picked up our county road since we were old enough to ride a four wheeler. Strap a milk crate to the front rack and we would be at it at least a couple days a year.
Magic......check again. They can throw up a FAST FOOD joint over night. :o
Had a neighbor that used to walk the roads for exercise and pick up all the aluminum cans. He would invariably find from 1 to 2 six packs worth of unopened beer. Seems underagers would drink their fill and throw the last beer or 2 out to get rid of any evidence.
The suggestion of of having a deposit fee on wrappers, cans, plastic sacks, bottles etc would eliminate a lot of trash. The worst is a used diaper, the deposit has already been put in them.
Magicman, the poor fellow needed a little nurishment for his 30+ mile trip, one way, to get his gas. ;)
Norm
It is amazing how much stuff gets thrown out a car window. I live in a small rural community of about 5000 people. I belong to an ATV club & we clean-up the backroads annually. The Town helps out & hauls all the garbage to the dump. Tires are always a big problem. We'll be cleaning up again in 4 or 5 months.
I live 15 miles from the nearest town, but I am on the road to the local convience center (read trash dump). Even though South Carolina requires all loads of trash to be covered, I still get a lot of trash on my property. I fill up a normal kitchen garbage can sized bag every week or two.
Most of the people littering your property don't have anything and don't want anyone else to have anything, either. When they throw their trash onto your land, that is an assault.
A lot of fast-food trash will have a receipt inside the bag showing a time, date, and other information. With cooperation from the vendor (or not), you and the district attorney can determine who is responsible and prosecute them. However, here in NC and in other states, many vendors' ignorant cashiers ask the customer "Do you want your receipt?" (as if the receipt is not part of the transaction) just before they utter some stupid phrase like "Have-a-good-un." rather than say "Thank you for your business.". This practice prevents tracing litter to the offender.
After being offended one time too many, you'll take your camera, photo the license plate, and testify against the offender in court. Make your complaint at the magistrate's office and have the state bring charges.
Just my opinion; Feel free to make it yours.
MM,
Maybe they are slow eaters.
Quote from: WDH on February 13, 2013, 09:33:02 PM
MM,
Maybe they are slow eaters.
:D :D :D He's already pithed off and you're making jokes. :D :D :D
I am sorry :). You are a bad influence.
Nope, not really pithed, just will never understand the lack of respect that some have for themselves as well as for others.
My road runs beside and a below the state highway where it first turns off, out of site of houses on the main road. Seems as everybody empties their cans and bottles as the come down the hill. I wind up with a good percentage. One of my daughters was leaving my house a few weeks ago, there was a pickup truck that had backed off the road, down my drive. He had the tailgate down and she could several garbage bags on the back. When he saw her he slammed the tailgate and left in a hurry. Sounds like I was about to get a deposit.
Is there a landfill near you? You would be amazed when those trailers full of compacted trash headed for the landfill just spill stuff while driving.
I've seen garbage trucks lose half their load driving down the road on a windy day
Around here you get a ticket for a leaky load. Also get tickets for throwing burning material from a vehicle , cigarette. It stops some trash, but we have our "fair" share.
Last summer some renters pulled out of their house and headed up the hill in front of me. They went all of 50 ft before they threw a soda can on my neighbors lawn. Really? You couldn't have cleaned that out in your own driveway?
I am also 30 minutes from a fast food joint and same phenomenon. Folks save it till they get on my road to toss it out. I just don't get it. My girls and I do a twice annual sweep and its ridiculous. Empty beer cans I can understand (not that I condone drinking and driving) but household garbage is just obnoxious .
Its even free to use my town's dump!!!!
Here in Michigan, and especially since they past the bottle return law years ago, the ltter problem isn't all that bad. There is a good deal of roadways that are adopted out to organizations, and even family's to pick-up trash.
When I went down to visit Tom, and maybe things have changed a bit, I hope, I noticed that some of the roads we took to different saw hobs were so littered, that I thought it was a landfill. Really really bad. Maybe I was just used to our roadways.
You should see the roads up here once the snow melts. 5 months of litter is exposed for all to see. The state crews do a good job cleaning up the litter in the spring, and because of our bottle return law the bottle/can collectors can be seen scouring the ditches as soon as bare ground is exposed. Sometimes whole families can be seen walking each side of the road while someone drives slowly along the shoulder of the road. I always wonder if they collect enough bottles to pay for the gas it takes for a days excursion?
I was traveling behind a garbage truck that had stopped at a convenience store for beverages. The worker hanging on the back of the truck threw his can out onto the road shoulder instead of simply dropping it into the back of the truck.
I watched a guy that I knew that operated a fruit/vegetable stand, discard his empty drink cup at a traffic intersection. I was behind him, so I stopped, retrieved his garbage, and followed him back to his business. I got out, walked up to him, and handed him his cup. He was still standing there with his mouth open when I left. OK, I did tell him what I thought about his actions.
I followed a pickup truck in my lane one day. They didn't know I was behind them. The one on the passenger side threw a pop can out. I stopped and got it, caught back with them by the time they got to the mill lot. As soon as I got out of my truck the passenger wanted to know if I had any slabs for firewood. I replied, "No, I think you dropped something, I know you didn't mean to lose it", and pitched the can back to him as I came around the truck. Talk about a funny look, good reflexes too, he caught it before it hit him. They have never been back.
2 things, u talk about the Indian crying commerical, go out to the pine ridge reservation in SD and tell me they cry about littering, or a few up here in northern minnesota.
a few years back, me and the girl friend were just driving out of the local movie theather, the car in front of us, 2 younger kids, well 18-20 years old, just left the show hall, and was pulling out of the driveway from it, we were right behind them, threw out a big plastic cup of pop/soda. come on u just left the showhall, u could have put it in the garbage. well i had to follow them, they headed into town, for about 5 miles, they pulled into a strip mall, i pulled up beside them, rolled down the window, and told them they had a choice, go back and pick it up, PLUS 6 other peices of trash or i would turn them in, i got there plate number, it was there choice, i wasnt mean or loud , just matter of fact. I said i would follow them back to make sure it was done, and they did, they went back and i followed them, and they picked it up, plus the 6 more, well she picked it up, she was the one that threw it out, not the guy. maybe they threw it out later, but i made a point, u never know whos watching.
This reminds me of the job I had in high school. I worked at the town McDonald's, and one of my jobs was from time to time go out on the parking lot and pick up the trash. I went out one night on a weekend and there was a car with a boy and girl in it about my age, I could tell they were on a date. As I got closer to the car while picking up trash, he rolled his window down and tossed his trash out right in front of me. I could hear the girl laugh and that made my blood boil. I walked over with a smile, bent down, picked up the trash, straightened up still smiling, and threw it in his lap while saying, "I know what your house looks like!" Needless to say, he did not like that. He came out of the car and I thought we would fight right there. I was scrawny then and I figured he would beat me like a drum, but I was really mad and did not care. We jawed for a few minutes, and I walked off and finished picking up the lot. He went inside to the bathroom to try to clean off his clothes, then went to the manager to complain. I walked in just as the manager walked up front to talk to him. The manager told him that if he was going to be that kind of customer, we did not need or want his business. As the guy left in a huff, the manager hi fived me and told me to be careful, he did not want me getting beat up over a little trash on the pavement.
I was following a car one night was just about to pass him when a half empty beer bottle came flying out of the window and smashed on the hood of my car. Glass and beer everywhere. He followed up with a middle digit. Imagine his surprise when he realized I was driving a marked police car :D :D
We spoke for awhile, got to know each other. Heck I even gave him a place to spend the night :D :D :D
That tire business could be easily eliminated if here was a place to drop them off or at least be lesser of .
It's the politics of trash .Often the trash collectors will not take old appliances auto parts etc . So they end up by mid night delivery to about the first county road outside a municipality .
I'm going to give Van Wert Ohio a little plug .They addressed the situation and built a recycling center .Rather than whine about it they made a difference .It's funded in part by tax but if they didn't take the bull by the horns the county road crews would be digging old tires and refridgeraters out of the county ditchs any way .
The people can haul anthing in there within reason .Haul a load of brush in and haul out a load of ground mulch if they wanted to ,free .It's kind of cute watching them attack hauled in tree trunks and big rounds on the week ends with their little saws for fire wood .What the hey it's certainly better than letting it rot away tossed in a county ditch so it's a win win situation .
We live about a mile up from a local river access, everyone knows about the road signs? ones that show an upcoming cross road or entry, these sign are targets! for the beer bottles, one 50 yards from the mill, every day especially during the summer months you can here the hits, followed by the laughs, kinda makes me mad, harder to clean up shattered bottles,
it is not just lazy people who wants to get rid easily of their trash, also it is very expensive to handle and much cheaper just to dump it somewhere. I have just seen a documentary where New York trash collectors make a $75,000 a year (there are 2 on each truck), the truck itself costs $350,000 besides its maintenance, so the trash issue is not for free.
Trash collection on a large scale is highly political . The Waste Management company for example is a very large scale operation with a lot of politions in their pockets .
Of course none if this info has a thing to do with people littering up the county side because they too lazy to dispose of the stuff in a proper manner .Kind of like a bunch of little kids hiding their chewing gum on the bottom of the church pew .Look some time if you think I'm kidding .Geeze now that's nasty !
Each time I see this topic title, the optimistic side of me hopes to see a heart warming photo of a dog with puppies along a pretty country road.
Well that's another sad subject all together .
I live on a 1.5 mile long dead end country road with about 6 houses on it. During the summer the other half and I go for evening walks and pickup aluminum cans that are worth 10 cents here in Michigan. I can't for the life of me understand the appeal of driving up and down the same short dead end road drinking Busch Light and then tossing the cans out the window. Last summer we collected 76 dollars worth of cans just by going on walks down our little road. We got to go out to eat a few times on the "booze cruisers" last fall.
I may get 2-3 cans a year off my dead end dirt road with 6 houses on it. :D But get the paper wrappers,plastic bags,coffee,soda cups. I keep looking for a deposit on them,but the landfill keep telling me no. :D
:D Well I'm going to tell you what .You live down a desolate road the kids use for lovers lane you're going to find more than beer cans .
Made me think of this episode of Seinfeld.
http://youtu.be/KdsU_cn8u8E
One morning I saw a car sitting in the end of my driveway. I went down to investigate and saw the windshield was smashed. They took the inspection sticker. They also took the license plate. But the morons didn't think of the VIN. I called the cops and it was promptly removed. I'm sure that that lead to a rude awakening for the morons.
We had one some fool ditched in the alley behind one of our rentals . A call to the local constabulary had it on it's way to the impound lot in about 45 minutes .
Quote from: Raider Bill on February 15, 2013, 08:11:25 AM
I was following a car one night was just about to pass him when a half empty beer bottle came flying out of the window and smashed on the hood of my car. Glass and beer everywhere. He followed up with a middle digit. Imagine his surprise when he realized I was driving a marked police car :D :D
We spoke for awhile, got to know each other. Heck I even gave him a place to spend the night :D :D :D
Good one , I like that :D :D :D I have friends and a son in law enforcement :D :D :D :D
someone mentioned old refrigerators car parts and such being dumped. we have scrap dealers here that will pay you for anything with enough metal content to it. if someone was to dump anything metal beside the road it would not stay there long. an acquaintance of mine had a new central heat unit put in her house. she asked the installer to leavethe old one in the yard for a friend that wanted it. someone came by and got it before her friend go there.
Yeah about the scrap metal. I am in the household and commercial recycling biz. I train individuals with disabilities to sort (often by hand) different grades of glass, metals, fiber products, all plastics and anything considered a household electronic device. We dont turn anything away...ever. We will pick it up at your site or allow drop-offs 8 hours a day. The only thing we charge for is something with a refrigerant. We charge $5-$10 and then get charged $15 to have the coolant released/contained, go figure.
In our community, you still see these things discarded just about anywhere!
I walk the 1/3 mile in front of my farm about once a month or so. Road drinkers are the biggest problem. I pick up a full 45 gal garbage bag of stuff every time. I am retentive enough to separate the recyclables into my recycle bin. I just hate sending stuff that could be used to a landfill unnecessarily. Makes for less garbage.
"Political" posts will usually end up in the woodshed....
I've got the same problem along the county road where I live. Every time I mow the 440' road frontage of my place, I have to pick up a sack full of litter...fast food wrappers, beer cans, bottles, diapers...
Public education along with rigid law enforcement and hefty, mandatory fines are the only thing that will help. Courtesy and respect for one's neighbors seem to be foreign concepts for a large portion of the populace these days.
Diapers, Diapers I don't get diapers, what a lowlife that would do that
smiley_airfreshener :D :D :D ::)
I live 30 miles from the nearest fast food joint or sizable town and a lot of people drive the 30 miles to work and back every day. You can find remnants of a burger and fries (cups, boxes) anywhere along the rural roads. I suppose when they're done eating and take the last swig of pepsi they just toss the trash right out the window. Some people think the world is their garbage can ::). I'd like to see the world dump some trash on them, see how they like it.
I'm always finding beverage cans and convenience store trash in my yard. I wish I could catch 'em but I'm sure they are throwing it out the window at night.
I've been known to give people back their trash. A grown man once dropped his Mountain Dew can in a parking lot. I picked it up, caught up with him and as I handed it to him I said, "I'm sure you didn't mean to drop this since there is a trash can right over there." I saw an older woman throw a gum wrapper out the window right in front of me in a restaurant parking lot. I picked it up and tossed it back into her window. A carload of highschool girls were parked at a convenience store when the driver came out of the store with a new carton of cigarettes. The girl in the passenger side was laughing as she tossed an empty pack out the window. I walked up, picked it up and told her, "I'm sure you didn't mean to drop this out of your window. I'll put it in the trash can for you." With that I put it in a trash can.
My wife and I took a train trip to Washington D.C. Going through Pennsylvania was the ugliest. We could see where people dumped old appliances off the road down the steep ravine and hidden from sight from the road. But not hidden from sight from the railroad. There was a lot of it and must be a common practice. Not a good testimony for the state.
The world is full of em'.
We went for a walk one night and came accross where a truck drove into a feild and dropped 3 Tv's, sump pumps, water pipe, bags of garbage, diapers, and oh ya....personal mail from gov. agency. Name and mailing address included. I felt like calling this gent myself but knowing I would say the wrong thing, so I called my buddy the CO. He said no problem he would clean up the "evidence" document then send the guy the bill as well as charge him with littering.
The thing that really gets me is Christmas trees. Now I don't mind a tree or two being cut down, 'Tis the season. But I don't want the tinsel covered tree back! Talk about an eyesore all winter and spring.
Did the guy that dumped the junk eventually get busted?
Quote from: JuniperBoss on February 17, 2013, 10:23:48 AM
Did the guy that dumped the junk eventually get busted?
Yeah, I think they wrote a song about it... :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_7C0QGkiVo
:D Well ya'all can get all emotional about it but I doubt you'll ever stop it .People have been flinging junk out of the car window since they have been automobiles and I imagine before that out of the buggy behind the horse .Of course that was in the days of road apples the horse left behind too .
You're not going to be to stop that trash out the window deal .I still maintain if ,the big if they had a place to drop off stuff like old TV's tires and such there wouldn't be tons of junk in the county road ditchs .Nobody wants to take that leap because companies like Waste Management wouldn't get their giant slice of the pie in collection fees .
Oh yeah the polititions can talk all this "green " stuff all they want but the green is money not ecoligy .
I think Al is getting pretty close on the larger items. The closest recycle center that will take old refrigerators is about 30 miles away. They don't pay for them so a person is out the gas to haul. Tires are the same way, take them but you have to pay them to do it. I guess it is just cheaper to throw them over the hill. >:(
I just hide the stuff in the woods until some poor scrapper comes around .When the Chinese tried to corner the market on scrap iron one kid got 180 bucks just from stupid stuff like old water heaters and a couple of junk washing machines and some scrap sheet metal .He was a good kid I didn't mind helping him out .
The scrap yards which are usually the cheapest rascals in the world were taking cars, tires and all by weight because they could sell anything that had steel in it .
What do you do with old tires ?There's only so many swings you can make out of them for the kids .I must have 50 of them in my shop which I give away because they are still usable with legal tread .Trailer tires maybe .Others dump them in alleys ,behind gas stations or in the county ditchs ,I don't .
The rascals get like 3 bucks a pop to take them ,who's going to pay that when they can't even afford gas in the car to get to work if the did have a job ?
I suppose you could toss them in a heap and kerosine them and toss a match .Wow would that make them whine .Probabley not a good idea .
The heavy black smoke gives you away....
Oh every so often you see black smoke just boiling off a brush pile fire .Brush doesn't blow black smoke like a tire .Actually once the pile gets to burning good brush doesn't hardly smoke at all .
The fire police will get you.
Quote from: WDH on February 19, 2013, 08:57:08 PM
The fire police will get you.
Affirmative. fire_smiley smiley_fireman_hat
Buy a grinder and make tire mulch :)
Well ya know really it's kind of funny .They charge people to take the tires then they grind them up and sell the grindings to put in the bottom layer of a land fill .I suppose from one perspective it's just good business .
The best one I ever saw was when Welded pipe line construction formerly of Rosebud Mich laid 42 miles of 20 inch gas line across the corn fields .At the road crossings they piled up old tires to protect the roads when they ran the big crawler side boom tracters across them .
They must have had 6-8 semis full at a buck a pop .After they were done with them the same guy charged them two bucks a pop to take them back . :D Now that's a smooth move .
Today I was taking the trash to our "transfer station" and I plastic bag blew out of the back of my truck. I pulled over to get it, but as I did another truck went past me and pulled over to get the mail. The woman got out of the truck and literally stepped over the bag twice (coming and going) she got in her truck and went up her driveway while I got out and grabbed the bag.
While I was clearly in the wrong I just thought it odd that someone wouldn't pick up garbage right in front of their house. It was more work for her to step over the bag than it was to pick it up.
I can tell you how long it takes to eat a chocolate bar or any number of other treats because I live a few doors down from a convenience store and have counted the paces to the garbage. This is in a town with garbage cans not too far away. I also refuse to apologize for having a messy vehicle with cans, wrappers etc in it since I won't litter. Every now and then if I am at the dump or it is getting too deep I will get out a bag and sort everything out. I am always suspicious of people with clean vehicles.
Well they saw you pulled over and new you where going to pick it up, and you where the only one with trash in the back of a truck, maybe thats what she thought :)
Our Son lives within a few blocks of a Post Office. He can tell you what folks do with junk mail.
Magicman,
The company I work for is a Contractor for the Railroad, C-S-X to be exact. I travel the most of the Eastern US, and I see this stuff in every nook and crany, it is just lack of respect, and laziness. Some of the Laziest people too are Engineers on the rail, I won't even try to describe what we see out on the rail, and the sad part is.....they have a van that picks them up and takes them to the motel or the rail yard to thier cars. It's a sad thing, this world anymore. How many of you can remember the commercial from the 70's of a Indian standing by the roadway when a litterbug drives by? Remember the tear in his eyes? There is an Electrician that works with me sometimes, and I don't know what it is,...he just has to find a reason to throw something on the ground, it's just sad.
Jim