America, the Beautiful. God Shed his Waste on Thee

I’m really surprised nobody feels as strongly about this as I do.  Really.  Every day on my commute to and from work, driving around town, and so on, I see people toss trash from their car.  Wrappers.  Bottles.  Cigarette butts.  Cups.  You name it.

If I was president/prime-minister/king/emperor for a day, the first law I would pass would be immediate death penalty for anyone harming or exploiting a child.  The second law I would pass is a $1,000 fine and 7 days in jail for littering, that would be “per discarded object” not per incident, by the way.  The third law, by the way, would be public lashing for anyone on food stamps who also smokes, but that’s for another article.

What’s most ironic is the large percentage of offending motorists who also take the time to affix a bumper sticker on their vehicle proclaiming how proud they are to be “American”.  So proud, in fact, that they can barely hold back their desire to express their pride by expelling shit from their vehicles any chance they get.  Even more ironic is how many folks hang a flag from their rear-view mirror for whatever country their ancestry hails from.  If it is so great, why did your ancestors make the trip over here?  Face it, your origins suck.

Here’s a shocker for you:  Cigarette butts take months to decompose in open weather and sunlight.  Months.  Maybe the spattering of them behind your workplace smoking area hasn’t registered in your brain yet, but you might have noticed that if you don’t pick them up, they tend to stick around almost a year (or longer in many cases).  They are not classified as “bio-degradable” folks.  They never have been.

Beer and soda cans.  Plastic bottles.  Fast food containers and plastic wrappers.  Styrofoam cups and plastic lids.  Empty cigarette boxes and packs.  These all will outlive you and I.  Not to mention how ugly they look laying around everywhere.  They blow in the wind and end up in parks, rivers, lakes, and our front yards.

If you even remotely “like” this piece of land we stole from the Indians, then you should pay it homage by putting your trash in something appropriate.  Don’t toss it indiscriminately.  From all of us, and your children’s children: Thank you!