Sunday, April 25, 2010

Picking up trash along the road

Yesterday day morning Meg and I helped with the roadside trash pick for the Orange County Radio Amateurs Club. It was a long over due task so we met them early in the morning and joined a group of about 10 or 12 people. Below is the trash we picked up from about a mile of road in Orange County, NC.

Funny trash tells a lot about people. There were no healthy items along the road, no water bottles or other juice cans. What we found were soda and beer bottles and cans, alchol bottles big and small, skoal tins,  fast food wrappers and cups and junk food wrappers.

Since I was a kid I've hoped people would stop littering, but it will never end. I know now that the people that are littering are not people who eat and drink healthy. Nothing we picked up would be in our diet at all except a beer once and a while.


Sometimes you find a little beauty along side the road.

Clematis crispa I think. It was sprouting up in the grass along where the highway department mows. Not quite filled out in color yet. It was a delight to find.

13 comments:

How It Grows said...

Thanks for do your part!

Randy Emmitt said...

Thanks, but I wouldn't say I was doing my part as I don't litter in the first place. You might say thanks for picking up litter for somebody who is less than responsible for their own actions part.

Personally I think anyone caught littering more than once should be required to spend 52 weekends in a year picking up trash along the roads where they live. Then maybe they would never do it again.

tina said...

I think there must be a huge correlation between folks who litter and unhealthy people. Now if we could just get folks all healthy maybe no litter? Good job picking up the mess. People in your club should be awarded medals.

Tatyana@MySecretGarden said...

Thanks for doing it, Randy! I pick up trash when I walk my dog, and it's mostly soda, beer cans, fast food wrappers.

Southern Lady said...

Our youth at church picked up trash along the road on Saturday, too. They were all amazed at the amount of beer cans that were found. Doesn't that make you wonder how many people may be drinking and driving? Carla

Shady Gardener said...

Thanks for your participation in the trash pickup! We used to do it until the threat of haz mat made us quit taking the kids out.

Love the little clematis... can't believe it was in the ditch!! :-)

Anna flowergardengirl said...

This drives me nuts--especially the cigarette butts. They pile up at the intersections.

F Cameron said...

Isn't it amazing how much trash is thrown out on roads? Like you, I thought litter-bugs would be a thing of the past.

Good for you and Meg to get out and help out.

We went over to the NC Museum of Art today. The building is amazing! The ground landscaping is interesting with a few meadow grasses within mowed sod grass. Trees in scree areas.

Les said...

Bless you and others like you for doing God's work.

Just Jenn said...

Thanks for helping to keep a little chunk of the planet clean. =)

The other thing is if you're eating an apple and throw the core or a banana peel or orange peel there's a good chance that it will decompose along the road side unlike plastics and tin cans. I do agree though in general that if you're tuned in enough to feed yourself health food you're more likely to be tuned into what's going to keep the planet healthy too...

Janet, The Queen of Seaford said...

When the kids were in high school the band did adopt a highway from the middle school to the high school. We volunteered every time they did it. The kids were funny as sometimes they would find parts of cars....told us they were going to build one from the various parts. Other times there were things tossed that one might not want a kid to find. Some people are pigs. sorry, just my opinion.

Andrea said...

I had difficulty posting comment here yesterday, will try now!

I thought somehow that advance countries like yours have more responsible people about littering. In countries like ours where lots of people walk in the streets without regulation enforcers, litters is really a problem. My psyche is not also congruent to these conditions, as i dont want litters and irresponsibility. You can imagine my anger, in fact i want to cut the arms of people who open their car windows and throw their litters outside, e.g. candy or snack wrappers. Here, we assume that those with cars are mostly the educated and of course the well-off in terms of capacity to pay, however, these incidents are really shameful. My feelings in the country are a bit assuage by your experiences in a country more advanced and easier to implement the laws. Hmmmm! thanks. end of my speech, hehe.

Lisa said...

It IS discouraging to see all of the trash that people toss out of their cars -- along our road, there are always fast food bags, beer bottles, appearing, etc. You'd think in a college town, we'd be a bit more enlightened, but the perimeter road around campus has plenty of discards, too, suggesting that students might be culprits.

But, how nice to find the Clematis and the Chionanthus in flower!

Lisa