May 23, 2025 5 min read

By Dave Bates

For the Observer-Reporter

I’ve never thought of myself as an environmentalist. Common sense just seemed to dictate when it came to matters of littering. It wasn’t naturally occurring in nature so it seemed a bit odd to dump it there. Nuff said.

I can recall one particular afternoon, years back, mowing grass in front of our house in Dry Tavern. A passing car tossed a box of trash out the window of the vehicle and nearly hit me with the contents. It slid to a stop at my feet like the old 1970s littering commercial featuring the crying Indian, native American celebrity, Iron Eyes Cody.

No tear came to my cheek.

I knew the gentleman who had deposited the litter (and I use the term gentleman loosely). We were acquaintances. And I knew where he lived. Boiling mad, I collected the refuse in the box from whence it came and drove to his home. When I arrived on his front lawn with the contents he greeted me with a hearty “hello!” and asked what he could do for me. I greeted him with an equally salubrious salutation, and with a forced smile on my lips I told him that I had been out mowing when I saw some items “fall” out of his car and I wanted to make sure he got them back.

Being a good neighbor, I was just looking out for him.

He stared blankly at me like I had just escaped from the local insane asylum. He said, “Dave, I threw that trash out along the road. It’s just trash.” “Bingo,” I replied. “And I don’t want your trash on my lawn any more than you want my trash on yours.” I turned and walked back to my truck, leaving the litter on his lawn and told him to make sure he had a good afternoon. He shouted after me that “You can’t just dump trash on someone’s lawn and drive off.” I smiled. I don’t think he fully realized the irony of his statement and I proved to him that one could, indeed, do exactly that. I’d feel safe in saying that he thought more deeply about littering after that.

Which brings me to the point of today’s article. I hadn’t thought so deeply about littering for many years. Litter occurs so pervasively that we almost become numb to it. I was recently taking a walk on the Game Lands on the ridge above our farm, when I came upon an empty can of Michelob Ultra along the berm. Ten yards and I stumbled on another … and another. This continued for better than a mile, adding up to 18 beer cans. Now there are only 24 to 30 cans in a case of beer and I know that there was originally a full case because I found the box in the weeds. Simply put, what idiot tosses cans of beer out the window onto the side of the road? Probably the same moron that opens a case of beer, in transit, and drinks 18 beers while driving down the same highways that your family and mine might be traveling. I hate to sound like a cop but, then again, I am. Open container laws be damned. Forget about driving under the influence. Negligence, reckless endangerment, underage drinking? I guess I’m just old fashioned?

Where along any plane of reasoning did this seem logical, polite, conservationally minded or even a good idea?

In case there is someone out there planning a similar outing for their Saturday evening social calendar, I wish they’d reconsider. I’d love to talk with them prior. Thinking about rationalizing this sort of behavior as simply having a good time, then don’t. It’s littering. It’s slovenly at best. It’s downright dangerous to be sure. And it’s just plain wrong.

When it comes to the type of slob that loads a pickup truck with discarded mattresses, construction waste and bags of trash and dumps it off the side of the road onto someone else’s property, I guess I can’t even begin to fathom how we might justify their actions or quantify their moral character. The last time I witnessed such flagrant slobbery my daughter and I almost ended up in court when I turned the license plate of the vehicle into 911. Instead of testifying against them in court, they were required to pick up their trash, no charges filed.

Cigarette butts, candy wrappers, fast-food containers, pop bottles, etc. Does it really make much difference? I think it might be time to initiate some conversation about littering and label it for what it really is. You may not make any friends but at least the view of the landscape will improve.

Dave Bates writes a weekly outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter. He can be reached at alphaomegashootingsolutions@gmail.com