June 3, 2010
Opinion
Tip: Don't deposit your garbage here
On Wednesday, I fished for a couple of hours at a local lake and left with the back of my truck loaded with junk left by some slobs who had been camping there.
As I was picking up the trash, another man came walking along the lake shore with a plastic bag that he had filled with trash. He shook his head and said, "The people who left that stuff were here for two nights and spent the whole time getting drunk and making noise. We have three families with a bunch of small kids with us, so I finally asked them to quiet down and stop the loud cursing about 11 p.m. on the second night. A couple of them got nasty, but they shut up when I said I'd call the DNR if they didn't pipe down."
"They just left all their trash piled up in the fire pit. I decided to collect it to keep it from getting spread all over the beach."
I sympathized with the guy and told him how much I appreciated his clean-up efforts on a lake I frequent. Though it's frustrating that we have to clean up after others, I earnestly ask everyone who loves the outdoors to keep trash bags in your car and make a habit of collecting refuse every time you go into the woods. You'd be surprised how your small effort will make a big difference in the trash level over the long run.
It's irritating that we're cleaning up after jerks who don't know or care enough to do it themselves. But if we don't pick it up, the only people who suffer are those of us who rely on these outdoor spots.
Most days I take a walk with my wife, Susan, covering 2 1/2 -3 1/2 miles around the neighborhood, depending on our route. Many times we come home with a half-dozen cans and plastic bottles that people had tossed out along the road.
The other day we picked up 12 items -- eight were bottled water containers, three were energy drink cans and the 12th was a plastic soft drink container from a fast-food joint -- all items with no deposit.
No one was going to get 10 cents for taking them back. None of the drink containers I picked up along the lakeshore had deposits, either.
It's long overdue for us to modify the Michigan bottle bill and require deposits on virtually every drink take-out container sold in the state. Maybe then some of these slobs will clean up after themselves.
http://www.freep.com/article/20100603/BLOG33/6030388/1038/ENT03/Tip-Dont-deposit-your-garbage-here
