trash talk

Capsule trash 2
Originally uploaded by lasse22.

• Number of garbage trucks that would be required to contain all the annual road debris of California’s highways: 8,750


• Number of miles those garbage trucks would stretch down the highway: 45


• Lives lost in 2006 to trash on California’s highways: 155


• Amount per year that the State of California spends cleaning up highway trash: $55 million


• Percentage of trash along the highways that was “unintentional” (gum wrappers, cigarettes, soda cans) in 1986: 66%


• Percentage of trash that was “intentional” (mostly from unsecured loads – mattresses, sinks, produce) in 2006: 66%


• Number of pieces of plastic trash, on average, found in the average Georgia highway mile: 464


• Number of traffic accidents in North America caused by litter that is dumped by motorists or falls out of vehicles: 25,000

From Debris on Nation’s Highways, Long an Eyesore, Is Growing as a Hazard in this morning’s New York Times.

“It’s really a problem of individual motorists not understanding the aerodynamics of what wind can do to a mattress," says Scott Osberg, the director of research for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

I knew those cuts in school funding would come back to bite us.