By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
I drive around Carter County a lot, and one of the things I notice is the litter accumulating by the sides of our roadways – and the folks who are tossing it. I don’t mean the old washing machines or the stained mattresses dropped at illegal roadside dumps, though they’re a problem in their own right.
I’m talking about small litter items – candy wrappers, soda pop bottles, fast food bags, coffee cups and the like – that folks pick up at the corner store and then toss out before they get home.
I’ve personally never quite understood this tendency. Sure, I might throw the remainder of a hamburger bun or an apple core out the window. My justification is that the food scraps will make my car messier and, if forgotten, smellier; and that raccoons, crows, and opossums will make short work of them anyway.
Even paper bags and napkins, though unsightly and easier to hold onto and throw away later, will biodegrade with time. (I still don’t recommend tossing them, because it can get you a fine for littering.)
The bottles and candy wrappers, on the other hand, will hang around a lot longer.
Some of the garbage we see along the roadside today will end up in our creeks, and eventually our rivers and oceans, over time. Some of it will get covered over with leaf litter, and eventually covered over with dirt, but it will still stick around in the environment for generations before breaking down.
We have fantastic community groups, like the Trail Town organization and Friends of Tygart Creek, who are active in cleaning up our creeks, streams, and trails for visitors and locals alike to enjoy. But we could all do our part to improve the appearance of our community by making sure our own trash ends up where it belongs. That means holding onto it in your car until you get to someplace where you can dispose of it properly. It means making sure you don’t leave it where it can blow out of the bed of your truck as you’re heading down Route 2. And it means calling your friends and loved ones to task when you see them getting ready to litter.
I never understood the motivation behind being a litter bug until I read an essay from David Sedaris about his grandmother. The humorist, who will be speaking at the Paramount in Ashland later this spring, explained how for his elderly immigrant grandmother the area outside the car, and the roadways in the community, didn’t reflect on her personally. The state of the car, and how messy or neat she kept it, did reflect on her – at least in her mind – and like her home she wanted to keep the interior of her car clean.
Maybe that’s you, and you don’t want the inside of your car to be messy.
But whether you notice it or not, the state of the community outside your car reflects on you as well, and the rest of the people you share your community with.
So, please, do your part and hold onto your garbage until you get to a trash can. Keep a grocery bag in your floor board and deposit all your wrappers there until you get home. Do whatever works best for you.
Just, please, don’t throw your trash out the window. It makes all of us look bad.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
