Short rant: Another popular littering season.

[634-5789]

So, I've been an IDOT volunteer for 21 years, spend almost everyday picking up an area approximately 20 miles, which is actually 60 miles,left side, right side, medians. I've seen everything. Trends have been thrown out paperbacks, to VHS tapes and cassettes, to DVDs and earphones to phones. Now, it's vape pipes and fireball bottles, and those oversized gas station styrofoam 60 ounce drink containers...and straws.....those damned straws....

But something has me concerned...lately, I have been seeing a serious uptick in KINDER wrappers, you know, those little toys with a little treat inside wrappers and juice boxes / bags. Adults aren't throwing these out the window, it's kids. Toddlers, and somebody in that vehicle needs to stop this behavior. And report littering. I have no one to take my place and at 70 with a knee concern, the miles are starting to show. Thanks for reading.

Here's a small video about Illinois litter stats: https://fb.watch/dH-eesDuaI/

[markie]

1. thanks for the video

....and for all the time spent picking up litter!!! I am a slacker just keeping my road frontage clean (about 400ft) and that is primarily alcohol cans

I hate litter!! and can never understand people that just throw stuff out their car window

[Skittles]

2. I take very long walks and often pick up litter

it disgusts me that I often see the same litter in the same place, like someone throws a beer can here daily, dumps their cigarette pack here, etc - I think they need to do a TV show where they film and confront these chronic litterers.

[2naSalit]

3. Now that would be...

a worthy reality show!

[Skittles]

6. I would just like to see them explain why they do it

I mean, WTF is wrong with them?

[multigraincracker]

4. We live on a 5 lane highway and

every few days we have to pick up trash in our front yard. Sometimes whole garbage bags.
Last week someone tossed a couple of them, or they fell out of truck or something like that. It was a mess and dark out, so I called 911 as it had become a hazard for cars. It was extra bad. The deputy met me out front and I was explaining it to him. Then I told him I had found a credit card receipt and handed it to him. He looked a little puzzled when I did that. I said it's a good clue as to who is responsible. Said he hadn't thought about looking for evidence. A road crew came out and cleaned up the mess in the road in a few hours. I was looking out there in the morning and saw a guy filling up a couple of bags with trash in the yard and ditch. Didn't look happy. I'm betting the cop gave him a choice, pick it up or get a littering ticket.

[Skittles]

7. I saw a big half-open bag of trash by the road

I retrieved a trash bag from home and when transferring the trash, found an envelope (elec bill) with the address, not too far away...so I wrote a note on it that said next time you dump your trash in the road don't include your address, ASSHOLE and stuck it on their door.

[Ziggysmom]

9. Ditto! I've done that before as well. Can't believe people throw away intact mail

without shredding it! There are commercials all the time on TV about identity theft protection and it's been in the news a lot.

Many years ago I lived in Madison WI, near the university. On move out week you'd see mountains of trash, furniture and stuff on the curb. My daughter & I would walk around looking for any antiques or good items. We found a cage with poor Mr. Hamster still inside and scared! We adopted him and named him Oscar, after the garbage can muppet on Sesame Street. The students would also leave behind a number of pet cats and kittens. We helped foster & rescue those, too. How can anyone with a heart do stuff like that??

The older I get, the more I hate asshole type people!

[Roy Rolling]

5. You are a modern miracle

Thanks for the inspiration, I was just ranting to anyone who’ll listen on Facebook the importance of doing something . I was talking about climate change but this is a perfect example. Don’t like litter? Walk 60 miles and join the fight.

Well done, sir or madam, well done. 😜👏

[Cheezoholic]

8. I worked a mowing crew back in the 80's for a couple years

We mowed the edges and medians along I65 from Indy down to Louisville. Your post is spot on. If one wants to get a feel of the country per se, look no further than the trash along the interstates. Back then, like you said, we saw an amazing amount of paperback books which I thought was strange. Most of them were those Harlequin romance novels. There were also lots of porn magazines. Clothing was another big one. We always went 5 miles ahead to collect as much trash as possible, especially clothing as that shit would take down a 16ft bat wing mower. I don't know what its like today but even back then when people were supposedly aware of the problem of littering it was insane the amount of garbage that got tossed out of vehicles. We found furniture, appliances hell even some mannequins. It was nuts the shit people tossed out.

[634-5789]

15. We could both write a book, Yep, crazy stuff out there.

[logosoco]

10. Thank you for being kind to the Earth

when so many others are not!

I grew up in the 70s and took all the "pitch in" and "give a hoot, don't pollute" to heart.

One of the easiest things i taught my kids was you do NOT throw things out the car windows! Although i did explain if it was an apple core or banana peel that would decompose fast, but be sure to throw it in a grassy area.

I live a bit off the beaten path but we still get plenty of litter bugs.

[Woodwizard]

11. I am in the Catskills.

About 7 years ago a local swimming hole on a hardly traveled road got on the ten best swimming holes list in the US. Suddenly it turned int a mob hundreds of people would pile in, garbage of every sort was everywhere at the swim area and a trail all the way to parking.

Finally after a few years of it the state had to do something now a paid permit is needed to go in it is patrolled by the state forest rangers. Ugly posts and cement barriers were put up to stop parking on the already narrow road.

It is one of my favorite roads to bike on again now that traffic is gone, sucks it had to get to that point, some people are slobs.

[ReluctanceTango]

17. Hate to say this

But roadside garbage always goes up whenever apartments go into an area where they were rare before.

One of the post offices where I worked was tucked into a neighborhood of upper middle class houses. Then an apartment complex went into the lot right behind us. Within two months of occupancy, they had more garbage in the road around them than we did--when we dealt with literally tons of paper on a daily basis.

Same thing happened north of my house. We had a middle school go in there, and nothing much changed--Roadside garbage remained the way it had for all the years before the school. Sure, we'd see some notebook paper blowing around sometimes that we hadn't before, but not all that often.

Then apartments went in, and the garbage is more prevalent. The city stays on top of it, for the most part, but they can't be everywhere at once.

Our city council district used to always vote for candidates who promised to restrict building new apartments here. It was nearly impossible to find an apartment in the area. What few complexes there were had high occupancy rates and unusually low turnover. Waiting lists were years long. Lots of complaints about it, but the local residents wouldn't budge on allowing more apartments. Things changed only when the Silent Generation and older Boomers started dying off in higher numbers.

But now I sorta understand why they resisted having apartments up here. The garbage and traffic congestion we now have are no fun, that's for sure.

[ShazzieB]

12. Anybody else here old enough to remember this?

[EYESORE 9001]

13. I helped clean a stretch of US highway for several years

I was amazed at how many plastic bottles containing urine that I found. It’s not like there was a shortage of restrooms along that stretch of highway. I attributed it to long-distance truckers who didn’t want to stop for nuthin’.

[634-5789]

14. Yep, I get 10-15 a week.

The latest is some moron peeing in nytrile gloves and tying them off. Find a lot of these lately.

[ReluctanceTango]

16. Because Lady Bird Johnson pushed it as First Lady

Texas is rather good about staying on top of roadside littering.

I was a kid when Lady Bird pushed for the anti-littering measures. Thanks to her, Texas had a significant and near-immediate decrease in people tossing garbage out of their cars. By the early 70s, the highways were pristine or close to it in most areas.

Texas pioneered the sponsorship of roadside clean up areas, and they are super-popular here to this day.

"Don't Mess with Texas" was originally a PSA campaign against roadside littering. Willie Nelson came up with a ditty for it, even, and I still remember it: "It's mighty reckless, to mess with Texas."

I was so used to living in a state where it was uncommon for people to toss garbage out of a moving car that I was always shocked when I moved to other states and saw people do it far more often than I was used to seeing. They wouldn't do that sort of thing in their own home, or put up with anyone tossing garbage into their yards, so why do it in public?

Get a fricking garbage bag for your car, and use it. When it's full, take it out and put it in your usual garbage can. Put a new bag in the car.

It's not that difficult to do.