Tag Archives: roadside litter

Alert “06880” reader Josh Prince loves to ride his motorbike through Westport and Fairfield.

He blogs about his jaunts too, on Longitude & Gratitude.

We’re blessed, he says, with “genuinely fair fields, plus lazy, rolling hills, old-growth forests, New England onion farms, wetlands, a gorgeous but gentle saltwater coastline, Revolutionary and Civil War-era homes, and tumbledown stone walls everywhere you look.”

The other day — forced off his Vespa Granturismo by the dreaded polar vortex — he took a combination walk/jog on Long Lots and Hulls Farm Roads. Josh went “just fast enough to break a sweat, but slow enough to observe the stark, mid-winter beauty” of the area.

He found it.

Along with plenty of litter.

Josh documented his travels with a few dozen photos.

For example:

The next day — realizing the trash wasn’t going to pick itself up — he grabbed his iPod, work gloves and a few black bags, and headed back.

Josh wrote about what he learned:

1) You need more than 1 bag.

2) Wet  newspapers — still in their plastic — weigh as much as a cinderblock.

3) Don’t bother with cigarette butts. They’re tough to pick up; there are a bazillion of them, and if you set out to achieve a pure state of trashlessness, you will be physically and emotionally doomed.

4) There is a direct correlation between the height and elaborateness of a home’s wall or fence, the size of the property fronting the street, and the amount of trash.

These homeowners may not actually ever see the trash. They drive into their driveways, close their gates with a remote, and that’s that.

A 2nd possibility is that they may not choose to see the trash. Everything that’s on their side of the wall may be pristine, but on the road-side of their walls? Someone else’s problem.

A 3rd possibility is that they do see it, are aware of it and just as disgusted by it, but they still don’t do anything about it.

Ta da!

5) I have no idea who actually litters, and I’m actually not that interested in trying to understand (or reprimand) them. Their actions are so beyond  comprehension that I’d rather not obsess about their mindless, selfish, antisocial behavior. I’m not going to bother to write my senator to introduce a cigarette butt bill. I’m not even going to get angry.

There’s zero satisfaction, productivity or progress in that. But there’s a ton when you decide to pick stuff up.

(To read Josh Prince’s entire blog about garbage, click here — the scroll down.)