Roadside Trash

[Sweetfancymoses]

Totally off topic, I need to let off steam. Please forgive me.

b

This time of year with the snow gone and the grass not growing yet I pick up trash along the roadsides and I am sore today! Along 2 miles of road I picked up 10 contractor bags full of mainly beer and booze cans/bottles* and miscellaneous trash, as well as 7 tires, 2 TVs, and a toilet bowl. Last week I found several dozen partially filled gallon cans of paint and various other hazardous waste in one spot.

With the 10 cent deposit on bottles and cans in Michigan, I tend to see less of that category there.

Roadside adoption programs, deposits, community service per judge's request, chain gangs, more tickets for littering, or a combination thereof?

What is the situation in your neck of the woods?


(* Trash problem aside, how much drunk driving is going on?)

 

[dougd]

In my neck of the woods it's a lot of beer cans/bottles and in the last year or so couches, TV's, tires, chairs, bags of household garbage. One of the trails I take my dog on for walks is city owned and they blocked off parking to make it limited, can just fit a car in, with signs for littering. A couple of years ago some do-gooders walked the road I live on collecting garbage, mostly beer cans/bottles and came up with 74 large bags. The city did come out to collect them. To be honest a lot of this started when the city mandated that citizen's buy Purple Garbage Bags or they would not be collected by the garbage trucks. At 15$ a roll for 10 that is a pretty steep price. In some ways the city doing that kinda cut their own throats as they probably spend more on roadside pickup then they used too.

dougd

 

[gumpus]

Pretty disgusting. Littering is bad enough when it's just one cigarette butt or a candy wrapper but that is not littering, it's dumping...and imposing a financial burden on the community. So personally I'd support BIG fines...like 10k or more...make doing it riskier.

I also like like the community adoption concept. I remember being on a business trip in Germany and commenting to our (Italian) taxi driver that everything looked so clean. He said that on Sundays everyone is expected to go out and tidy up the area around their house. I asked him what happened if you didn't do it and he said he knows because he works Sundays...he said your neighbors yell at you and say "hey - you're not doing what you are supposed to!".

I feel lucky because I do not see roadside dumping around here. We do have a couple of special garbage days a year where we can put out just about anything and they'll take it.

 

[yellowcanoe]

Bottles and cans aren't the issue as we have deposits on them.. Big deal recently on nips.. you know the tiny bottles that are quaffed enroute to somewhere. They did not used to have a deposit and were eyesores.. So now they do.

But fast food trash should not be on the side of the road. Ugly season approaches when the snow retreating reveals all..

Because the transfer station charges by weight big furniture dumping is an issue.. We have it fixed in our neighborhood as the sites most often used now have big boulders installed thanks to neighbors with big boy earth moving toys.