Are Garbage Trucks Littering Your Land?

Who junked my land? These days you hear so much about "going green" or "saving the environment."

Some would argue there is so much talk that it makes one lose sight of the real issue at hand. Perhaps we're so busy that our blind eyes can't see the trash that pollutes the green ground.

Sometimes those "feel good" or "feel not-so-good" TV magazine shows remind you how those plastic blue bags adorn a sea gull like a dress or the plastic six-pack holders wrap around the neck of a bear cub.

I'm not a fanatic "go green"-er, but I can't be accused of being a "litter bug," either.

Sure I do my "job" to reuse and recycle. I'm your ordinary guy who has his blue bins.

I will say, though, there are times in life when push comes to shove and you just have to pitch it.

For example, you may have a month to move your whole house, or you may be ready to clean after three solid weeks of work.

At those times, the garbage can is my best friend.

Still, there are a few lines I won't cross. No matter how inconvenient, just dumping items from my hand to the ground just isn't in my repertoire.

For those who may find it difficult to have an intrinsic moral compass to keep you from just throwing things out the car window, I wonder if the almighty dollar would keep you from trashing the ground we walk on.

$12,500

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the penalty for littering actually could include imprisonment of up to five years!

Before you go considering that as an option for a little rest and relaxation away from your daily grind, how about hitting where it hurts the most? The wallet!

You could pay up to $12,500. That is not a typo! That is not $1,250...it actually is over twelve thousand dollars, just for deciding to dejunk in an improper manner.

Waste "Mis"Management

Do you ever see the trash along the highway? As I'm driving, I can't help but judge the pesky fellow drivers who just pop their window open and dump their candy wrappers or their water bottles out onto the land.

Here's an example from a major intersection in my neighborhood. A while ago, while waiting for the light to turn green, I looked to my left up the hill and blaring me in the face was all the junk on that corner.

I had a flash for a moment of our little family of three having a "clean up day". However, that little corner is so busy and that hill is so steep, that it would be too dangerous for our 6-year-old to keep her balance while picking up others' garbage.

So as that thought flew from my mind, I'm trapped with seeing the trash collected at that spot.

Then the other day, I saw trash in the middle of the highway. Not a pile, just here and there. Big pieces, little pieces.

As we got further along, up ahead I could see the Waste Management truck and I couldn't believe what was coming toward us. Pieces of trash were coming out of that truck and onto my land...our land!

The company's motto is "Think Green. Think Waste Management." Well, green wasn't what I was thinking...more like red! Red as in anger! I needed anger management at that moment!

It was one of those "I wish I had a camera" or a VIDEO camera would have been better! So I turn to YouTube, trusting someone out there in this vast land of ours would have something to share.

Sure enough! I ran across softorsteeltip's video on what they had discovered.

I particularly loved how they described what they saw; Waste MISmanagement! Amazingly, they shot this video in Colorado on a day in January of 2007!

I saw this more than two years later on the other side of the U.S.! Check their video out, because what I saw, I could have shot the same video myself.

The major difference is, the pieces I saw coming out of their truck was larger and more frequent than what you'll see in the video.

As we age, we're supposed to improve. From what softorsteeltip saw to what I saw, this is no improvement. Wait perhaps they did, from smaller pieces to larger pieces and less pieces to more pieces...if that's the improvement they wish to brag about.

Before you "drop" something onto our grand land, think about your time spent behind bars, or better yet, shoveling out over $12,000!

If you see trash on the ground, before judging your fellow citizens, as yourself; who junked my land?

Was it really a passerby...or could it have been the one who gets paid to get junk off the land?