posted
I just observed one of my older neighbors littering.
While warming up his car, he took two coffee cups full of liquid, walked to the side of a garage (not his) and threw the full cups of coffee and cups against the wall. He walked away, closed his car door and walked inside his apartment. He returned to the car with his wife and they drove away.
I could not believe it. So, I went to where he threw the coffee and saw he had a nice little pile going. Apparently, he cleaned out his whole car of trash and left it there. He actually had to walk further to that spot than to take it into his apartment.
I called our complex and the lady I was talking to was in shock too. She said she would give him a call.
But seriously, what is wrong with people?
Posts: 2064 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
He probably didn't think it was ok, but thought that other things are most likely worse, and more worth his time.
Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
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TTT, I forgot to reply to you again! *crimson The test drove everything out of my mind. [/off-topic]
---
I have occasionally poured out coffee or juice on the ground, but never left a cup. And never dashed liquid out against a wall where it would leave a mess. (Why would you? No, I know, same answer.)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
A few years back, my husband and I were hiking in the Cascades. We pulled into a parking area at the head of a trail leading into the Alpine lakes wilderness. There was another car in the parking lot with two people who were eating their McDonalds lunch. While we were putting on our boots and getting read to head out on the trail. This couple opened their car door. Dumped out all the bags, cups, and wrappers from their meal and then drove off.
Why would anyone do something like that?
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
We had a similar experience on Maui with a couple of hikers blithely ignoring the prominent "fragile, endangered flora, stay on path" signs all over the top of a hill to go marching down off-path.
About the best I can say is that some people, when their bad behavior is pointed out to them, at least have the decency to be embarassed. (Not those two, sadly.)
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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Lincoln, Nebraska. It's a pretty town, in my opinion, kept pretty clean compared to other cities and towns I've visited. My sister works there, and this happened while I was visiting her one weekend this past spring.
We were at the zoo, using a running trail that stretches through a large part of the city. At the end of our run, we sat and cooled down in the parking lot, under the trees, drinking water.
At one car in the parking lot, a couple is having an argument. They have kids, and I don't remember the conversation. Despite the trash cans located conveniently around the lot, the couple throws out sacks and wrappers and diapers and other pieces of garbage.
We watch, mortified, as they began to drive away.
The decision was made with little communication; we both walked over to the trash and began picking it up. As we walked toward the dumpster, the couple drove around the lot and circled past us. I made eye contact with the man, which was the only thing I could do, given my fingers were full of trash. Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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W: You try doing that when you have all these little kids to herd around! I try to walk to the garbage can and they are running into the street or killing each other! If you'd be home more to help me out -
H: I'm out there working my butt off so you can BUY the stupid trash you leave laying around -
W: You think I like being alone and having nothing to do but go to the grocery store?
H: Yes, apparently you like going to the grocery store.
W. You jerk. You want me to throw this away? Fine. ((rolls down window)) I'm throwing it away. See? Does that make you happy?
H: You're cleaning that up.
W: No I'm not! I'm going to the grocery store! ((puts car into gear, starts crying)) All I want to do is go buy more trash, with your money. That's all I ever want. ((sob)) I'm just a little shopaholic.
H: I can't believe you're doing this.
W: I can't believe you're such a jerk.
H: Look, I'm sorry. We can't leave that trash in the parking lot. Let's go back, and I'll pick it up. I'm sorry.
W: (Sniff) OK.
H: Oh, dammit. Look at that. Those people are picking up our trash. No, keep driving, this is too embarrassing. Crap. We can't come back here, ever.
W: Can we stop at the grocery store?
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I can't do a dramatic reconstruction, but I chastised a woman for littering when she was standing about six feet away from a garbage can. I told her she was setting a bad example for her daughter, who was standing right there. I asked her if she did that at home.
The funny part is that I was trying to do this in my limited Spanish, which is totally inadequate, hoping she would understand that better than English (once I realized she was Hispanic). Total fail.
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: "on Maui...hikers...ignoring..."fragile, endangered flora, stay on path" signs...to go...off-path..."
...probably means growers, or dealers meeting with growers, or ripoff artists.
More likely inconsiderate tourists who think this island is nothing but a big amusement park, who believe that since they've paid big bucks to get here that they're entitled to go where ever and whenever they please and don't even consider that people, you know, actually LIVE here.
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
I think the human potential for progress and discovery is evenly matched by our capacity for laziness.
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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It could be argued that humanity's capacity for laziness is a non-trivial component for our potential for progress. Technological progress, anyway.
Imagine a massive, autonomous mechanical monstrocity that does nothing but pick up litter all over the world.
... I'll make millions.
Posts: 80 | Registered: Jun 2007
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posted
Recently I was standing on the front porch chatting with a neighbor when the driver from a passing speeding car threw a beer can into the yard. The insult was fourfold: 1) He littered right in my yard! 2) We were standing there, and yet he had no shame. If the momentum from the car hadn’t thrown the can into the bushes, it could have hit us! 3) He was speeding through our neighborhood, where children play. 4) HE WAS DRINKING AND DRIVING!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. We weren’t able to get the license plate, and my neighbor howled and shook his fist after the car. Futile response, I know, but what do you do? The county decided to open up the end of our road as a short cut from one town to another, and now we’ve got the scum of the earth passing through.
Posts: 354 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Originally posted by DeathofBees: Recently I was standing on the front porch chatting with a neighbor when the driver from a passing speeding car threw a beer can into the yard. The insult was fourfold: 1) He littered right in my yard! 2) We were standing there, and yet he had no shame. If the momentum from the car hadn’t thrown the can into the bushes, it could have hit us! 3) He was speeding through our neighborhood, where children play. 4) HE WAS DRINKING AND DRIVING!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. We weren’t able to get the license plate, and my neighbor howled and shook his fist after the car. Futile response, I know, but what do you do? The county decided to open up the end of our road as a short cut from one town to another, and now we’ve got the scum of the earth passing through.
I feel your pain. We used to live on a street that connected one part of the city to another. You wouldn't believe the amount of litter we had to clean up on a regular basis. And we used to regularly have to pick broken beer bottles out of our gravel from where people would throw them at our house. It was great. I got to the point where I was just wishing they'd start drinking out of cans and driving because picking shards of glass out of gravel is no fun.
Posts: 36 | Registered: Oct 2006
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: "on Maui...hikers...ignoring..."fragile, endangered flora, stay on path" signs...to go...off-path..."
...probably means growers, or dealers meeting with growers, or ripoff artists.
More likely inconsiderate tourists who think this island is nothing but a big amusement park, who believe that since they've paid big bucks to get here that they're entitled to go where ever and whenever they please and don't even consider that people, you know, actually LIVE here.
Yeah, I think this was more likely the "idiot tourist" faction... I could be wrong, but I don't really imagine a lot of drug dealers with cute li'l pre-made walking sticks with leather loops for your hand.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
We start teaching our kids not to litter when they're about 2. By the time they're 4 they loudly correct us if we chance to let anything drop, say, if a receipt flutters out of my purse when I'm searching it, or something. The kids are all over that idea and would delight in sticking to the rules on that subject.
So how can an adult not be ashamed to mess up something that any well-raised 4 year old has down pat? It really is hard to fathom.
I also think people who throw cigarette butts down as though they don't count as litter or garbage are kind of strange. How can they not count as trash? The filters last forever, and aren't biodegradable in the least. And who would imagine that a parking lot or road or sidewalk should properly look like an old dirty ashtray? That's disgusting. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
which brings up a completely non-interesting point - I smoke non-filter cigarettes, and I make it a painstaking task to take care of my cigarette butts. My friends all make fun of me for it, since so many people just don't care. I admit that I've been very tempted not to care, but my city has all sorts of laws against smoking and litter. In the summer, if I'm in the open with no place convenient to store them, I'll throw them on the ground and wait for them to burn away into nothing (no filter, so they do become nothing but ash). Now that it's winter, that's harder to do, so I end up carrying cigarette butts in my cigarette case (which also conveniently has a flask attached to it).
I almost can't believe I'm saying this, but I support non-smoking laws, even outdoors, if they help get rid of litter. I've never been stopped by an officer for smoking downtown, but I assume that if I show him that I take care of my cigarette butts (see officer, they're all here in my case) that he'll let me off the hook. For me, following the spirit of the law is much more important than following the letter, and about 90% of the police officers/DNR officers I've encountered here in Michigan have the same attitude.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Feb 2007
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posted
Like Tatiana said, it's hard for me to understand why people who wouldn't chuck cans or other trash everywhere don't hesitate to flick their cigarette butts (or more than just the butts) around as if the world is a giant ashtray. I really appreciate the smokers (like DD) who don't view the world as their personal ashtray. Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Litterbugs = jerks. Big ones... stupid ones... dumb ones. Let's round them all up and throw rotten vegetables at them? Or... round them all up and make them pick up garbage? Yeah - #2's probably better, even though #1 sounds fun.
There's a sign around here that says something like - 'proud people don't litter. got pride?'. Too much pride can be a bad thing; that message still makes me think at least a little. Maybe if people respect where they are a little more, they'll care enough not to trash it. What do I know, though...
Posts: 1355 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
One of the things that's fairly common in my area and appalls me is dumping - when people take their pick-up full of trash down some little traveled road, and dump it all over someone else's property. Seriously, if you've already gone to all the effort to put all this crap in your truck, why can't you drive a few miles to the dump and put it there?
Posts: 959 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Dumps cost money to enter, depending on the size of your load. That's still no excuse for people just dumping the garbage somewhere else, but it probably is a motivator.
Our property is on a fairly heavily travelled county road, and every spring I go out and fill up three or four big garbage bags with trash near the road. Most of it is beer bottles/cans. We've been putting up fence for our livestock, and now the jerks seem to think that it's a fun game to try to get the bottles to make it over the fence. We find them much further into the property than we did before there was no fence. We're going to add a tree screen to prevent that, but it will be a while before it's big enough to do any good.
posted
Something else that really gets me is that our city will pick up big junk like furniture along with regular trash. Now, that’s a nice idea in theory, but it means that there is junk by the side of the road DAILY, even though I’m pretty sure the law says it has to be collected by appointment and on specified days. Our city looks like the county dump, especially on the first of each month near apartment buildings when renters have an expiring lease and don’t want to take their nasty, second-hand, cockroach-ridden sofas and particleboard bureaus with them. Some property managers have tried to remedy the problem by stating that all garbage has to be in the dumpster rather than junked beside it, but this just means people drag it off the property and put it in the bushes or by the road. Then, of course, it’s nobody’s property any longer, the city won’t pick it up because it’s not at a regular garbage stop, and it stays for months, making our city look trashy.
The upside of the law, of course, is that sometimes you can find something really cool by the side of the road. I found a pair of toddler beds for my kids once, but that was while driving through the nicer part of town, and they were there on the designated pickup day. I just got lucky. It’s the main thoroughfares that are the junkiest, because that’s where the apartments and cheap rental houses abound.
When I first moved here I was absolutely shocked and disgusted by the amounts of trash because I moved from Seattle, where having an extra bag of garbage next to your can will result in a $5 fine. Back home, I had to take my larger items to the dump just like everybody else or risk paying serious money for littering violations. I don’t see why any city would favor having the garbage service do pickup rather than making money on fines, but people seem to be lazier here as well as less concerned about environmental conservation than they are in the Pacific Northwest.
Posts: 354 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Saying "people seem to be" a particular trait is different than calling people a particular trait.
Posts: 1355 | Registered: Jul 2006
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Seems to me that somebody with an old sofa to throw out could take it over to Habit for Humanity. Seems to me that said person could also drive it to the dump and pay the money like an ordinary citizen if it wasn't salvageable and they couldn't wait for the designated day. Seems to me that they could call the Veteran's Association and have it picked up! Seems to me they could have someone help them lift it into the dumpster. Seems to me that anyone who would leave it by the side of the road for six months instead of one of many other acceptable options is pretty stinkin' lazy. If you couldn't get from my post that I was referring to the laziness people around here have in throwing away trash, what thread was it you thought you were reading?
Yes, many people in my city are LAZY about throwing out their trash. Are you just being disagreeable because you wanted everyone to know you're a noble North Carolinian who couldn't possibly be the moron who threw some old endtables and a rusty bicycle into the ditch at the end of my block?
Posts: 354 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
The local goodwill does not accept furniture. I am not aware of any dump - real estate is at a premium over here. I do not own nor have access to a truck.
I've never had to/been able to toss furniture, but I'm very glad that garbage service takes it.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: I've never had to/been able to toss furniture, but I'm very glad that garbage service takes it.
And I'm very glad that when you do, you will, of course, put it out with your own trash on your own property on the day designated for furniture pickup or else make an appointment with the garbage service. Posts: 354 | Registered: Jul 2002
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I haven't the foggiest idea what day that is or how to find it. I'd put it out when I put out the rest of the trash.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I'm assuming in Michigan a DNR agent is the same as it is here (when I saw CMC's post I was hoping that devildreamt lived here).
Department of Natural Resources. Something like a park ranger. In Indiana they have priveledges that police officers don't.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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To find out when large item pickup is done, just call your local sanitation department, which should be in the phone book (and if it isn't, just call the local gov't).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Sure, but it is inconsiderate to those picking up the trash.
edit: maybe you'll get lucky and put it out on large item day by coincidence, or your district won't have a specific large item day (though that's unusual, nowadays).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: Too much work. Easier to put it out with the trash.
JH, I know you live in the DC region. It took me exactly 5 seconds to type in "washington dc garbage pick up days furniture" into google, whose first link led me to embedded pdf, which stated on the first page that bulk items are picked up by appointment. I click on the bolded "online service request" link to the left, which allows to register online to have a scheduled pickup of my bulk trash.
All in all, it took maybe two minutes of my time.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Well, the trash is still there. I thought the apartment complex would have cleaned it up by now. Guess I'll be picking up next time I take out the dogs.
Posts: 2064 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Valentine014: Well, the trash is still there. I thought the apartment complex would have cleaned it up by now. Guess I'll be picking up next time I take out the dogs.
You know where you should leave it, don't you?
Posts: 3936 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
Roll your eyes all you want, FlyingCow. When someone says seems to be, it leaves room for someone to convince them otherwise. It's more of a - this is what I see from my experience type of statement, leaving room for discussion. When someone calls names, their mind is made up. It's more of a - this is what I see and you'll be hard pressed to convince me otherwise. Those are my opinions on the two wordings. If you think my post is silly, that's fine - considering I wrote it for me, not you.
posted
"Yes, many people in my city are LAZY about throwing out their trash. Are you just being disagreeable because you wanted everyone to know you're a noble North Carolinian who couldn't possibly be the moron who threw some old endtables and a rusty bicycle into the ditch at the end of my block?"
When in Rome...but actually, I myself am pretty meticulous about not littering. Not that I don't have things about myself I could work on, but I wouldn't call myself a litterbug. I've never been in a position to have furniture to throw away. I've also never lived in a city big enough to have large-item pick up. Why did you assume there were no native North Carolinians on Hatrack?
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by steven: Why did you assume there were no native North Carolinians on Hatrack?
I made no assumption at all. Or rather, I knew definitely that there ARE other N. Carolinians on Hatrack, and I hoped they would join me and raise a cry of, "Gee whiz, it makes me pretty sick to see all the trash, too!"
Posts: 354 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
You guys worried about littering, with your cigarette butts, should join the army and go to Iraq. No litter laws there. The whole country is like one giant ashtray. Also, urinal.
Posts: 82 | Registered: Apr 2007
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And yeah, I'm really getting tired of seeing men pull out their whizzers and take a leak at the side of the very busy road. Really, no, I don't want to see that particular bit of your anatomy. No, I don't.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
DofB, you have my sympathy. I have never driven through that part of G'boro during the day much, and I'm usually too busy driving or thinking about something to notice side-of-road junk. My theory, and it could be wrong, is that side-of-road throwout junk is not as big a potential problem in a relatively warmer, sunnier place like NC. Cold and rainy do not make good conditions to leave things by the side of the road. Nobody would want it, or want to deal with it either, after a couple days in the rain. It's just a theory, though.
I do hope you know there's at least 1 non-litterbuggy native around. Besides which, I think a lot of the people living near you may actually be transplants too. That's not to say that all the natives are non-litterbugs like me. There are a number of redneck families I know who just take their old junk and toss it down into the woods next to their house. I mean, it's their family land, it's not like they'll sell it in the next 40 years, most likely, but still.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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