Why do people toss out trash on the road?
While driving to Lakeport awhile ago, I saw so much trash dumped along the Nice Cutoff and along Highway 29 that it made me sick.
What makes people so lazy and thoughtless that they dump litter, large and small out of their cars?
In my 20s, I was waiting for Husband No.1 as he went into a convenience store. A guy, probably in his 30s, came out of the store and threw his receipt on the ground. The trash can was a foot away from him. I yelled out my window, “Litterbug!”
He looked at me, scowling, and I repeated it, “Litterbug!”
As he got in his car, he reached down and brought up a gun and pointed it at me. I hit the floorboard of my little VW Hatchback and didn’t look up until Husband got back in the car.
It took decades after that before I scolded anyone about littering.
What can residents do here in Lake County to help clean up the trash that tossers toss?
When my Rhodesian Ridgeback Toby was alive, I would take him for walks and bring a bag along for litter. Seemed like I cleaned that section of road over and over again.
A neighbor, Sally Ann, goes out faithfully and collects litter in Lucerne. She does a grid that encompasses the avenues and the Foothill area. She gets the orange bags from the Department of Public Works in Lakeport and when she needs the full bags picked up she calls them and they collect them.
“The trash is constant,” Sally Ann said. “There are certain spots that are really bad. Some streets are worse than others.
Garbage pick up isn’t mandatory. People who don’t have trash service collect their trash in bags in their yards and eventually they take to them to the dump but critters get into them beforehand and trash gets spread everywhere.”
“For the most part,” Sally Ann said, “people are appreciative for what we do. The people of Lucerne are pretty decent.”
Thomas Aceves adopted the Nice Cutoff several years ago. He had a cleanup there pre-Covid that I participated in. I had my orange bag and a long grabber for the trash. I started near Mar-Val and worked my way toward the Rodman Slough. Even with the grabber I still had to bend over quite a bit, which put an end to my time as a volunteer for Aceves crew. “People have to be in good shape to do this,” he said.
He told me that the most recent cleanup that he and his crew of five did was a few weeks back and that he goes out with his crew four to five times a year.
“During the last cleanup,” he said, “we collected around 15 bags full of trash. It was never ending. In fact, this whole year has been bad. I don’t understand why people throw their trash out of their cars. In riding my bike around, I even see a lot of trash in peoples’ yards. How much time does it take to pick it up?”
Aceves recently took his teenage son out on a cleanup and hopes to get more volunteers. Young and old.
We spoke about how the schools should teach kids to be responsible for their own trash and their environment. We can’t rely on parents to teach them, everyone has to know the consequences of what will happen when trash builds up. We have a beautiful county, let’s respect it.
Aceves said that one actionable solution is to “call the Department of Public Works and find out if your road is adoptable in the county.”
What’s a girl to do?…encourage others to put a trash container in their cars. Dammit!
Lucy Llewellyn Byard welcomes comments and shares. To contact her, email lucywgtd@gmail.com
