Road Rage:

Garbage Rage!

Are you just sick of those slobs who throw their garbage out the window on to our streets?  Garbage everywhere, cigarettes, fast food bags, couches!  Tons of garbage everywhere, who are these awful people?

It may be you.  No you say?  It could be me and you.  I think it is safe to say that even the best of us has let at least one piece of garbage fly out our car window.  Could all of that garbage really come from pure accidental litter.  Yes, and no.

A simple cough drop wrapper or gum wrapper that just blew out the window isn't really to blame.  Sure they add up, but what is the real culprit?  You are, or more like your house is.  Your house?  It may not be your house or dwelling, it could be your work.  Most of the garbage you see everyday on the side of the road comes from...drum roll please...Garbage trucks.  Yes, our local garbage truck drops the largest percentage of garbage onto our roads everyday.  The cause of this is not from overstuffing or poor transportation of the trash back to the dump, but how it got tossed into the garbage to begin with.  By simply making sure your garbage goes into a trash bag, and then making sure to tie it off when full will reduce the volume of garbage on the road.  Loose garbage in a dumpster means loose garbage in a garbage truck.  So the number one way to reduce garbage on the road today is pack your trash.  At home, and at work.

Your loose garbage isn't all to blame though.  The #1 piece of garbage on the side of the road is a cigarette, and we all know those are being thrown out the window by a litter bugs.  It is true non filtered cigarettes are biodegradable.  The chemicals inside of them though is  toxic, and most people smoke filtered cigarettes which are not biodegradable.   When rain water runs by that popular off ramp with hundreds of cigarettes laying there it can dump into the nearby creak where  fish, frogs, and anything else alive in that stream are exposed to that toxic waste.  Not good.

Some other more obvious tips:

• Drive with windows up

• Keep your car clean

• Tarp your loads, and make sure everything is tied down properly

• Give a Hoot, and just don't throw your garbage out the window!

Littering is against the law in the United States.  If you know or saw someone who is illegally dumping call your local authorities and report them.   If you don't you simply encourage the behavior, and will also get to look at their garbage every time you drive by.  Do you want to live in a clean neighborhood, or a dirty one.  You are deciding it's fate.

If there is a high garbage problem area in your neighborhood you should call your local health department.

If you see a garbage truck loosing lots of garbage call the company and report it right away.  Reporting it is not tattle telling, it is helping.  If reported fast enough the dispatcher can contact the driver to notify him to stop the truck and fix it.  Garbage is flying out of their trucks everyday, and it might just be your fault!

Don't forget to pick up two pieces of garbage that is not yours everyday.  How hard is that?