PIGS! What kind of a "human" pig does it take to oink up some of our beautiful roads?

General Discussion
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I feel very privileged to be able to drive my cars on some beautiful roads in the beautiful weather we have where I live.

The tax base is very substantial and the streets, roads, trail, streets, avenues, and bridges are very well taken care of with fantastic landscaping utilizing palm trees and native plants, to be pleasing to the eyes of motorists. Lots of workers are dedicated to cleaning them up, regularly, too. I have no complaints with the way my tax dollars are used in this regard.

This morning I woke up to another wonderful, warm morning and ate breakfast. I went for a bike ride on trails paralleling the same roads on which I drive my car. I feel grateful to be in such a paradise.

While riding, I observed various pieces of fresh litter, cups, paper, Styrofoam dinner boxes, beer bottles, cans etcetera, that were carelessly discarded along the road.

I have no doubt it will all be cleaned up in a prompt manner by the workers I see doing this frequently, but until then people still have to look at it. And the cycle will begin again with fresh trash deposits.

What bothers me the most is thinking that there are some pigs living among us that have no qualms about dumping litter wherever is convenient. I wonder if they throw garbage down in their own properties?

What is wrong with these idiots?

What can be done about this? What works?

What has been done about litter where you live that actually has helped?
CSA
:palm_tree::sunglasses::palm_tree:

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Yeah, I dont know what is wrong with people. Here in the nearby suburbs of Philly I see this sort of thing all the time. I mean I have literally watched people roll a window down and throw a bag of fast food trash right out the window… Just…right out the window and onto the street. I have seen this more than a few times. I wont make generalizations on the “type” of persons doing this, but I could as each instance I witnessed (more than 10 times over the years) could have been the same person in terms of appearance from a 10 foot distance.

But I’m certain that you do not need to be a “type” or ethnic group to behave in this manner. The type would be a “Scum Bag” in my opinion…

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That type of littering is almost always done by teens and other young adults who lack a sense of adult responsibility and/or civic pride, and it is almost always done very late at night. A local street that was pristine at… let’s say… 8:00 PM can be strewn with fast food detritus and beer bottles by the morning.

Mature adults rarely–if ever–litter, except for throwing occasional cigarette butts out the window. Unless somebody actually witnesses these acts, there is almost nothing that can be done in regard to enforcing existing anti-littering laws.

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Anything with alcohol in it is thrown out to get rid of the evidence. I suppose if they toss them, any other trash in the car might go with them. A friend used to work at a fast food restaurant while in college. He said that after midnight they got a lot of drunks.

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First on my list of litterers are smokers. Flicking butts out their car window thinking it will magically disappear. They don’t even see themselves AS litterers so maturity has nothing to do with it.

The group that gripes my cookies here in the sunshine state are the beach-goers that leave behind their drink straws, candy wrappers and every other little bit of detritus tucked under the sand in the exact spot they’ve been “camping.” And then they party! Every Jan 1st, there is a volunteer cleanup of the beach from holiday revelers.

I’ve traveled around the world and seen litter in EVERY country. I’ve never been to Japan, though. I hear it is very clean and not because there are armies of sanitation workers cleaning up the trash. The culture just don’t accept litter. I don’t know if there is a solution.

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That’s true. Down here there is no deposit on beverage containers so they generally just stay on the road until a worker or neighborhood group picks them up.

Up north, we have a 10 cent deposit on beverage containers, (soft-drink & alcoholic). Although that does not deter the drinkers jettisoning evidence, it does attract pickers looking to cash in on the deposits. Some kill 2 birds (actually 4 birds) with one stone… 1)they go for their daily exercise walk, 2)pick up the litter, 3)recycle materials, 4)collect deposit money.

I have to say that a deposit helps the situation.
CSA
:palm_tree::sunglasses::palm_tree:

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7

The greatest accumulation of trash that I see is at a local sports complex where a dozen or more baseball and soccer fields share acres of paved parking with concession stands, rest rooms and trash barrels EVERYWHERE. When I ride my bike on the deserted parking lots on Mondays after a weekend of games I’m amazed at the squalor left behind, From all manor of plastic bags and cups to dirty disposable diapers discarded along with the baby-wipes and even discarded prophylactics the place looks like a movie setting for the aftermath of some catastrophic event. I’ll spare everyone the description of the restrooms from one of the park clean up crew. But of course the young athletes and their parents had an enjoyable weekend and will later complain that the city is paying municipal workers far too much for menial work causing taxes to be too high.

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I imagine folks that litter usually do similar with their own stuff. I doubt the cars they’re throwing the crap out of are nice and orderly and vacuumed…ever. Or probably their houses. Some folks just have a higher tolerance for disorder and messiness than others. And they probably assume no one else cares about things any more than they do.

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And here I thought you were going to talk about wild boar hunting down there.

Well, more than once I have stopped the car to pick up someone else’s litter on the side streets. It’s like gang symbols though that if you leave it on the road, it’ll attract more people to litter. So the faster it’s cleaned up the better to send the message that we don’t do that here.

I’m not going to venture a guess on the demographics of pigs but must have something to do with what they have been taught by their culture. In the military you would dare not throw anything on the ground, and in our family that was certainly the case. No gum wrappers, nothing gets thrown out. Now in fairness, before it became an issue, it was common to dispose of your beer cans and bottles in the lake when fishing, but not anymore.

I think it may have something to do with whether or not a person believes they are a part of the system or the system is there to serve them. If they feel integrated into the community, they likely won’t litter. Like I said before, visiting Detroit some years ago during their big garbage haulers strike was an eye opener into a different culture. We went to a park and the place was absolutely filthy with papers and garbage covering every square foot. None of the many visitors made any attempt to pick any of it up or bag it. It was someone else’s job. I couldn’t ever conceive of that happening in Minnesota. People would pitch in and at least attempt to bag and pile it.

I guess I was thinking of Durkheim’s law of suicide where connectedness makes a big difference both in suicide and littering.

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This discussion brings to mind the question of what do people whose vehicles seem to be personal dumpsters do with their accumulated garbage? Do those people occasionally clean out their rides at an appropriate disposal site or do they toss out the debris when no one is watching while dropping it in the floorboard or on the dash when driving in the public’s view? I have a friend who is obsessed with neatness and seems unable to drive unless there is a near empty plastic bag hanging against the center console. And then when enough trash is in that bag to be seen at a glance there is a panic to find a place to get rid of it and attach a fresh bag. On a long trip together I set an empty box in the rear floorboard thinking that would relieve some tension but it just worsened the angst. But then we do agree that tossing a partially eaten ice cream cone out onto the roadside is perfectly acceptable when no one is watching on a rural roadway.

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The major Maryland and Virginia beaches have purpose-built tractors to clean the beaches at night because the trash problem is so bad. These rigs are why there is no sleeping on the beach at night.

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We have those here at Fort Myers Beach and other popular public beaches. These tractors with rakes destroy the natural eco-system (grasses, nesting turtles ect) and are not allowed on Sanibel, Captiva and other beaches for that reason. Those beaches need hand-cleaning.

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I’ll have to admit that my work car was pretty much a disaster area. That’s what happens when you spend most of the day in it, but my dumpster was my garage trash can and nothing got thrown out on the road. Now my garage is kind of a site too but it will be appropriately cleaned up without dumping a wheel barrow full of stuff on the road.

Now it’s snowing out again and what would really make a mess is if you hit the hidden newspaper with the snow blower. We seem to have finally trained the paper delivery person to put the paper on the step, not thrown on the driveway, and with a colored bag, not a white bag like she used to do. Of course she gets an appropriate tip at Christmas for her efforts. God save the Queen.

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When I parked my car the other day, don’t recall where it was, I climbed out and immediately noticed what looked like 100 cigarette butts/filters in a very small area of the parking lot right where I was about to set foot.

I guess it was time for some butt-head to immediately get rid of his/her butt-ends. Can’t have a messy car, you know… simply charming. It would have taken such a huge effort to toss them the right way.
CSA
:palm_tree::sunglasses::palm_tree:

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As far back as the early 1960s it has been a $500 fine for discarding burning material from a motor vehicle in Oregon so flicked cigarette butts was not a huge problem. I wonder if they will become a problem with newer vehicles lacking ash trays. Our city parks have Summer camps for underprivileged children who tend to litter. I was talking to one of the staff who are city employees. A car drove by and the passenger dropped a large fast food bag out the window. The city employee picked up the trash and I held the garbage can lid while she disposed of it. The can was 10 feet away from where the pigs dropped the trash! I asked why she didn’t yell at them? She replied that’s useless. They will never change. A couple weeks later I was taking an early morning walk and there was a pile of to-go boxes, cups, and napkins dumped in the same spot. I hauled them the “long” 10 feet to the can. I have found most European cities to be clean but I avoid the tourist traps. I did visit Venice and litter was floating in the Grand Canal. Of course it was packed with tourist slobs.

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Reminds me of what’s going on in LA right now with their epidemic of Typhus. Loads of garbage and human waste from the homeless camps, yielding rats with fleas, and infesting city hall. Gonna have to fumigate and replace carpets. Get bit by a flea and either get treatment or bye bye. There was a reason for sanitation efforts back around the turn of the previous century. Maybe another subject dropped from school curricula.

Uff da, reminded me the first day of basic training, the former folks had left the latrine with all the stools plugged and filled with feces. With no rubber gloves or other protective gear, I took it upon myself to clean the place up. I didn’t get much help but the place was spotless when I got done. I suppose the goons thought it was a joke.

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I used to have a home on a busy street in the mid 80s. I had to shovel up cigarette butts every 2-3 months from my driveway and gutters. Every car had an ashtray in 1985 and I still had butts. People too lazy to empty their ashtrays. Fewer smokers now but fewer ashtrays, too. Doesn’t matter, especially on sa dy beach.

Even yelled at my mom once to pick up the butt she flicked on my lawn - we wouldn’t let her smoke in our house!

18

This reminds me of the Dog Park problem.
At an “Open” dog park, where anyone could use the facilities and nobody cleaned up their dog’s mess.
Then someone got the idea to create a “Closed” dog park and the change was dramatic.

For the lowly fee of $35 a year for 2 dogs, less than a buck a week, people took “Ownership”.
Not only did they pick up their own dog’s “gifts” but they had no hesitancy calling out, “Hey, Whoever owns the XXX, your dog just took a dump” and in the unlikely event that the looks from the rest of the owners didn’t motivate them a complaint to the rangers and fine would.

The point is that here isn’t any “Type” who won’t pick up their own Sh*t, it’s simply a matter of the community’s tolerance. If you’re willing to accept it…

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We are extremely unusual, we carry plastic grocery bags to put trash in. I think cigarette butts would fit nicely into those bags once they are cold.

IMO, a beanbag ashtray would it nicely on the center console. Maybe I can make my next billion making ashtrays that fit into a cup holder.

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Say what you want about the human, leave the pigs alone

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