Bikepacker67

As touring enthusiasts we have the opportunity to find ourselves in some breathtaking panoramas. But more often then not, instead of being inspired by the natural beauty, I find myself repulsed by many of my fellow man's filthy piggishness!

They turn this:



Into this:

The Figment

I Wholeheartly Agree...The most frustrating thing I found on my tours was the flat tires....from the broken glass and the wire from the truck tire treads after they exploded all over the road!

Something folks seem to Never rembember...
"Take only Pictures,Kill only Time,Leave only Footprints"

hoogie

i agree wholeheartedly ...

on a recent tour down the west cost of the south island of new zealand we saw an item of rubbish about every 10 yards in the roadside ditch ... most of it was fast food packets or plastic coke bottles/energy drinks cans and sports water bottles ... this seemed thicker the first 10 miles after leaving a town boundary ...

given that this coast road has now reached international touring staus and is on teh recommended list of must dos, i wrote to the loacl mayors and members of parliment, as well as the the folks responsible for looking after the roads [transit new zealand] to alert them to the state of the rubbish and the fact that thusands of tourists whizz along these roads and that will be the impression they get of this country, but they just weren't interested ...

Nigeyy

Well this is really my pet peeve. I loathe and despise litter. Quickest place to make a place look like a dive? Just drop some litter.

Alas, in relative terms of crime I know it barely registers, but it would be really nice to see some enforcement. I see litter all the time on my bike rides, I never stop being disgusted.

KrisPistofferson

Yeah, we've got a lot of good camping here in Tennessee, but we've also got plenty of idiot rednecks who will just trash the hell out of all the good places. It seriously makes me angry, like people who use racial slurs or beat their pets, I haven't a clue what kind of upbringing these people had, but I'm glad it was not my own.

Chris L

I agree wholeheartedly. Actually, you can add graffiti to that list as well.

The thing is, it's something that could be fixed relatively easily -- a few really steep fines, then the media would run a scare campaign (because these things sell sooooo many newspapers), and the problem would disappear.

Has anyone noticed that smokers tend to be the worst offenders?

Bikepacker67

Actually I find fishermen, and hunters to be the worst offenders.

MrPolak

Every morning while at a stop light some smoking idiot tosses out a cigarette butt out their car window. I want to get out of my car, pick it up, and throw it back into their car saying "Excuse me, you seemed to have dropped something which is yours".. but I don't want to get shot.

Or.... I stop at a scenic overlook and watch people get out of their cars to get some fresh air and... SMOKE! ACK! ACK! FRESH AIR! ACK!

Yeah, smokers treat our world like their ashtray. I say triple the taxes on cigarettes and make smoking chaingangs pick up the butts at every intersection. Smoke.. chain ... get it?

Chris L

Fair comment I suppose, although if you look at what they usually drop, most of it will be cigarette butts.

Bikepacker67

Nope...
Empty Eagle Claw packages, and plastic shotgun shells.

Ohhh... and don't get me started on the Paintballers - those fluckers are the worst in the woods.

cyclintom

Just to make people feel better - I was riding up Old Creek Road outside of Morro Bay on Sunday. There was this punk kid who passed me up like I was standing still on the climb. Me and my riding buddy were pretty beat by the time we reached the top and then before we hit Highway 46 we saw a whole load of fast food wrappers stretched along the road for perhaps 200 yards.

That punk kid was coming back the other way and said, "I just CAN'T leave that there." He overtook us 15 miles later with all of them in a large roll in his center pocket.

Dang but he certainly made us feel a lot better about the younger generation. Any other time I'd probably have picked them up myself.

NoReg

Overall the litter problem is so much better than it used to be. I remember a time when we didn't have public trash cans and where streets were strewn with litter. Of the place I regularly used to visit, Ireland was imbelievably bad, I hope thye finally caught on.

In the wilderness it might be the case that shotguns shells and fishing tackle (depends a lot on the local fishing style and whether it involves a lot of lure loss or bad bait practices). Autoloading shotguns are a real case of out of sight out of mind. But society wide fast food beverage cans and cigarettes are the worst.

Monoborracho

I have considered writing an article for the local paper of our small town. Our city is the hub for five major and six minor roads that converge here. I could grade each and every one according to trashiness.

In my opinion, the water drinkers now litter as much or more than beer drinkers.

mr bill

for some reason, i like graffiti. especially the stuff that's more than just a scrawled tag.

mr bill

at least most paintballs are biodegradable.

spinnaker

And sometimes it is one of our own this thread contains and admission from one of our own that he tosses his flat inner tubes. Any person who enjoys the outdoors and still litters is lower than the slime found under the rocks. They are destroying the very environment that they enjoy.

spinnaker

We have a very nice mural on one of the bridge abutments painted by the children of our local high school. Obviously a lot of hard work. This mural has been cleaned several times of graffiti. Some people can't respect someone else's hard work.

I see a simple cure for graffiti vandals (I refuse to call them artists) and litter bugs. Graffiti vandals would be placed on a crew to clean graffiti in their city. They would spend 2 days a week cleaning graffiti. They would not get off the crew until all know graffiti was eliminated from the city. Many of these vandals know one another so peer pressure could keep the occurrences from happening again.

You could have a similar program for litter bugs.

!!Comatoa$ted

Where I used to work the customers would go to the washroom and urinate on the floor beside the urinal. Occasionally a rude person would defecate on the floor beside the toilet, or leave a log on the toilet seat itself.

The reason I mention this is because IMO a lot of people who litter are of the same mentality of a person that will make their way to the washroom only to urinate on the floor. Not just a quick spray accident while trying to get it out in time.

Another is drunks; when I go through the forest around my area I always see lots of smashed beer bottles and empty cases of beer. I guess that says something about people who litter in general.

Chris L

That depends where it's painted I suppose. In a drab urban environment it can add a little colour if it's quality artwork. However, I'm not sure that environment was what the OP was referring to.

Saintly Loser

Back in the bad old days when I smoked, I was always very careful in the great outdoors not to leave butts behind. On camping trips or bike trips, I'd always return with a plastic baggie full of butts.

Some of my camping buddies used to go one step further and bring only unfiltered cigarettes on trips. That way the only thing to leave behind would be essentially dried leaves, which they figured would be OK.

Bikepacker67

Are you sure they were cigarettes?

acantor

Last summer we went whalewatching in the St. Lawrence River near Tadoussac. Our guide said that the most frequent cause of early death in whales is pollution. A single cigarette butt ingested by a 100 foot long whale can kill it.

cyclintom

While traveling around the USA I noted that New York and California were the worst places for littering.

While in Wisconsin I was AMAZED at how clean it was. I walked around Milwawkee and there wasn't so much as ONE cigarette butt in the gutter.

Illinois was also sparkling compared to California where tourists from all over the world come to break every rule they've ever lived by. And the locals are much worse.

mr bill

may i ask how?

acantor

Yes you may.

Baleen whales eat by “drinking” thousands of gallons of water. The baleen is like a sieve that traps plankton and fish. But the baleen also traps litter such as cigarette butts, balloon fragments, plastic toys, straws, food wrappers, and other human-made litter. Whales cannot separate the trash from the food. Everything is swallowed.

Once inside, the debris can cause havoc. Almost 5000 chemical compounds are present in tobacco smoke; 62 of these are known to cause cancer in humans and animals. Cigarette filters are designed to trap these toxins. When ingested by marine mammals, the chemicals are released into their stomachs. Also, even small objects can cause blockages that can kill a marine mammal.