Litterbug Trends

We live on a dirt road in the country. There isn't a great deal of traffic, and mostly it's just the people who live around here, and a few delivery trucks. Yet trash accumulates along the roadside. A few years ago, most of it was beer cans and beer bottles. Today I walked along a half-mile stretch carrying 2 large plastic bags, one for aluminum cans to recycle and one for regular trash. I only found 4 aluminum cans: two beer and two soda. However, the bag for trash was soon full, and included a half-disintegrated telephone book, fast food containers, candy wrappers, a deflated helium birthday balloon, plastic soft drink bottles, and several 500 ml boxes of chardonnay sauvignon. Apparently, this is now the beverage of choice among litterbugs, instead of beer in aluminum cans.

Once again, I was reminded of how much less litter we would have along the road if people would give up their unhealthy habits: fast food, soda, alcoholic beverages, candy and packaged snacks. More litter would be reduced if the telephone book people would stop distributing telephone books by tossing them on the ground beside mailboxes. I don't understand how they can get by with that year after year. Often they are tossed out by vacant houses, so nobody ever picks them up. I think the telephone book distributors ought to make their rounds a second time, one week later, and pick up all the books that are still lying on the ground.

And then there was the pink hitch pin. I wonder who lost that? My husband says they probably painted it pink so they wouldn't lose it. If so, that sure didn't work out well!