Accounting for Earth Day clean-up

Editor:

And the winner is: Tim Hortons! Anyone who has created or cleaned roadside litter in Canada knows that, hands down, Tim Hortons takes the lead for contribution to roadside litter – inversely proportional to the distance from the closest franchise. After all that’s why Canada is referred to as ‘Tim Hortons garbage can.’ But, quid pro quo, Timmies is referred to as ‘Canada’s public toilet.’

My wife and I just completed our annual Earth Day clean-up on County Road 9 between Cashtown Corners and Creemore. Overwhelmingly, the mess was discarded Timmie’s garbage.

We picked approximately 15 bags of garbage and 10 bags of recycling. Not that I’m counting.

We found at least 100 discarded Stupidity Tests which read positive (failed lottery tickets and cigarette packs. I assume these are tests you wouldn’t want found in your car so out the window with them!)

I Googled to see what the profile might be for the average litterer and found that a number of states in the USA have done that research. From a 1998 study posted at www.dontmesswithtexas.org I read: “…Texans in these groups are overwhelmingly teenagers and young adults… While gender is not a major predictor of littering behaviour, the findings indicate that young males are more likely to be Gross Litterers…”

From a Cape Cod Times article 20 years later the profile research found that: “…in subsequent surveys, people observed in the act of littering were found to be in two different age groups: 72 per cent of all deliberate litterers were under the age of 30; 71 per cent of accidental litterers were age 30 or over.

Nationally, males were responsible for 72 per cent of all deliberate littering and 89 per cent of all accidental littering.”

I have no idea what anyone does with this information. If the police can’t control drinking and driving, which is a much more serious offence, (we picked up 315 alcoholic beverage containers on this two-kilometre stretch) then there is little hope for prosecuting litterers.

Perplexed by how someone can buy a fast-food product and dump it down their cakehole before they get to Creemore, I was told that the projectiles are the litter from the previous day’s break and folks are simply making room for the new fast food.

One of Simcoe County employees who stopped to offer me some garbage bags and moral support said that he has seen people bringing their drive- thru goodies in one window and throwing out their refuse out the passenger side. At least that is on theirproperty. But, since we can’t fix stupid, I guess we just have to live with it. At least I have $31.50 that I didn’t have last week.

Murray Lackie,

Creemore.