Friday, May 11, 2007

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.

4 comments:

Lolabola* said...

ah the mattress in wilderness. never fails to creep me out and also make me laugh.

anniemcq said...

Did I ever tell you about the time I tried to get a kid's plastic swimming pool less than a mile home on the roof of my car? Talk about aerodynamics. It never came off the top, but it took me an hour to get home!

The stuff that is on the side of the roads in L.A. is truly mind-boggling. It got worse and worse the longer we lived there. It's not just stuff that falls out of cars on the freeways. It's the couches and chairs and other crap that people just dump on random sidewalks. Unbelievable.

mrtn said...

Speaking of trash, I made that I Ching set you were asking for:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/87942059@N00/sets/72157600206496021/

They finally started unlocking the upper floors of the library, so I could get these. I've been wanting to get up there for months.

suttonhoo said...

that's no trash, Martin. not even close.

you know I've gotta blog this.

gorgeous. just gorgeous.

(thank you.)

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