Cleaning up the country

[cougar]

I usually fish this time of year and usually catch fish.  But not this year.  Few fish left for a variety of reasons.   Garbage along the highways, however is in abundance.

And I discovered that I do not care much if I have a fish at the end of the line or a soiled diaper at the end of my litter picking stick; both are a measure of success.

My rough estimate for our "virgin" Northern British Columbia roads running through what used to be breathtaking scenery is that you can fill up a bag every 50 to 100 meters doing both sides of the road.  If you see 1 item, you find at least twenty items when looking around.

The most common items are  beer cans, followed by McDonalds cups with a plastic lid, straws, plastic bottles, glass bottles and jars, cigarette boxes, plastic bags, auto-parts, tires, container lids,  lunch boxes and trays.  Diapers are not that uncommon; found 3 of them today; I sometimes catch 3 steelhead on a good day.

Went up along a forestry road in the middle of nowhere in the Nass valley and in the 2km I still found two bags of plastics, cans and other garbage!

You'd think if this is a result of a few bad apples, the rest of us, the cautious ones will be able to clean after them and live in a tidy place.  Since this is not the case, I have to assume that the majority of our population are bad apples with just a few good ones here and there who are drowning , like me, in this crap.

Since fish are disappearing (surprise surprise), I am convinced that a day will come when those morons chucking their garbage where they see fit, will be served that soiled diaper for dinner and that old bottle of engine oil for a drink!

In the past two weeks I have removed over 12 bags full of garbage.  Still a drop in the sea!

 

Edited May 3, 2020 by cougar

[dialamah]

Thank you.  

[DogOnPorch]

The old days...

Edited May 3, 2020 by DogOnPorch

[Guest]

Alberta is no different.  It does give one pause when one notices how many beer and liquor containers there are in the ditches.  It's like half the population is driving drunk.

I have a friend who gets her family together for a weekend of bottle/can mining every spring when the snow melts, not because they need the money, or even to clean the place up, but to see if they can break last year's record.  I think they get into the hundreds of dollars.

One of the strange things I see when I'm out for a walk is that without exception, all the self absorbed tossers (pun intended) who dispose of their empty beer cans along the side of the road drink horse urine.  I never see a decent beer.  Ever!

Edited May 3, 2020 by bcsapper

[Nefarious Banana]

Live in BC also, and spend most of my time in the bush.  There's a 'new' kind of wilderness user that has no respect for anything. Hat's off to you sir . . . . 

[Moonlight Graham]

Yes people litter on my street all the time.  It's disgusting.  A lot of it in the spring is a build up from over the winter, then the snow thaws and 4 months of littering is revealed in all its glory.

[cougar]

1 hour ago, Moonlight Graham said:

Yes people litter on my street all the time.  It's disgusting.  A lot of it in the spring is a build up from over the winter, then the snow thaws and 4 months of littering is revealed in all its glory.

Litter picking is in the road maintenance contracts from what I know; but the companies who get the contracts never do it properly and thoroughly.  For this reason, we have accumulations from prior years.  Some plastics - lid caps in particular become brittle after a season of sun exposure and become impossible to remove 100%, but a lot of garbage also gets buried along highways after road sanding and snow removal.  And then in addition to drunks and morons throwing their empty cans and small litter out their pickup windows, you have the big offenders who take their large items to the first forestry road to dispose of them there!

Part of the problem is our landfills are now charging fees for garbage disposal instead of paying people for bringing their garbage to them!

In the fall of 2018 I found a large camping trailer hauled to the head of my trail to the river together with a pile of furniture and bags of stinky garbage!   I refuse to see my outdoors turned into a landfill!  So after snow melt in 2019 I was at this trailer with  a hatchet and tin snips.  It wasn't a pretty job and I did shed some blood in the process, but by mid July there was absolutely no trace of the trailer.  All piles of metal, plastic, plywood and styrofoam gone.  I had the conservation office catch me at it one evening and they promised help with hauling the debris but this help never came before I was done.   Interestingly over the months the piles were there, someone showed up and picked up the trailer's water tank, which apparently he could reuse.  He did not touch anything of the rest.

Edited May 3, 2020 by cougar

[cougar]

Just so you know I continue to remove garbage from our roads and backcountry.

On Saturday I was in the middle of nowhere in the Nisga'a land on a FSR that still produced for me (not fish, garbage).

Monday I went along another one 30km north of town.  It was grown in after one point, but when I looked down the slope I saw a bunch of items that did not belong - a lawn mower, barbecue, weed wacker, lawn chair, printers and scanners all left there by some Jumbo Moron.

I posted a picture on Facebook looking for a volunteer to remove the items.  About 20 guys expressed their frustration but not one volunteered.

So today I took one of the companies pickups and went out there and removed that pile of crap and also three large pickup tires from other spots along the road.

This evening - same thing, more backs filled up and disposed of in the dumpster.

But we need a CULTURE CHANGE!  This type of littering and wide spread pollution and destruction cannot continue.  

 

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by cougar