A Few Words on Littering...

"Littering is bad, m'kay?" [/MACKEY]

However, it still gets done.  And we get stupid laws put in place to "prevent" it - like San Jose's bag law - new this year! 

- Stores may not hand out plastic bags AT ALL anymore (takeout food shops are exempt.)
- Only paper bags may be offered.
- These bags must be from a source that certifies some percentage of post-consumer recycling (I don't recall how much.)
- Offered?  Yeah.  If you're smart, you bring your own bags.  If you don't, you can buy bags with your groceries - bags are ten cents each.  They say they're reusable, but the handles don't work and the bags tear.
- The merchant must purchase the bags, but funds raised from consumers buying the bags go to the city.
- And, it still doesn't address the basic problem - people throwing shit out the window.

Although I don't think that's the biggest source of litter.  Other sources?

- I'm always picking up stuff that people threw out on the side of the street into my yard!  At least a good chunk of it is CRV, so I do pick up some nickels with the trash (I have a very aggressive recycling programme here at home.  If I were allowed to run a small incinerator, and the City were to properly mount its kerbside recycling programme, I'd have a landfill footprint of ZERO.)
- People keep sticking business cards or flyers in my front door, or hanging them on the knob.  On laying them on the front stoop.  I know how to use Yellow Pages - dropping stuff in my lap like that is usually a good way to make sure I don't get anything from you!  And, it's been known to blow around.  Whose fault is it when it ends up in the street before I get home?
- People putting things under the windscreen wipers or in the beltline weatherstrip on my car door.  This Really.  Pisses.  Me.  Off.  It's invariably for items, services, or events I have no interest in, and don't care if they happen or not.  This leaves me with a few options:
-- Yank it out and drop it.  As far as I'm concerned, the person who put it there was littering, he just wasn't committed to the job.
-- Yank it out and handle it myself.  Why should I be forced to do your job?
-- Yank it out and ram it up your ass.  I would, but the person who put it there is usually long gone.
(I don't know why, but putting some BS like that on my car is a bigger pisser-offer than sticking it on my front door!)

And let's not limit "litter" to material objects?  How about pop-up adverts online?  Just more crap you don't want that you have to deal with.  I'd also include SPAM in that list, but that's more like "postage due junk mail" than anything else ("junk mail" because that's exactly what it is.  "Postage Due" because the sender doesn't have to commit any resources to getting it out.  At least regular junk mail is something that pays the Postal People...)

Whatever happened to the days when advertising was inoffensive, and could be readily ignored?

Discuss.