Cutting down on fast food trash?

We've tried like heck to avoid allowing fast food businesses in town.

What hasn't worked is that they offer lots of money, and some have made it in.
What has worked is that there aren't many (three in a town of 75k?).

I agree that it is a significant problem, and once the business is established, I'm not sure what can be done. Ban disposable containers? Make everybody come in with their own reusable containers, or make people buy them on site? Skip all the disposable wrapping if food is eaten on-site? Make fast-food illegal (can you imagine?) do not know.

 

Seems to me the problem isn't fast food garbage.

It's lazy-nice person, inconsiderate morons whose mother didn't teach them to pick up after themselves and deposit their garbage where it belongs.

I say take their license plates, then haul their parents there to pick up their children's garbage. Be sure to let Mom and Dad know they're there because their grown children are pigs.

 

Yikes.... well, yes I agree with that to some extent as well. Though even when all that trash IS disposed of properly, it is still a sizeable problem - just not as visible "in my back yard." Fast food places generate gobs of trash. Beyond the "fast" and the "cheap" I have no use for them. But the statistics show that I'm in the minority (as usual). The "lazy" part is what makes these places profitable in the first place.

 

I offer these suggestions after doing environmental design and refuse-minimizing efforts in both rural and urban areas:

1. Eliminate drive-throughs. Have people park their vehicles and walk in. Several fast food franchises object to eliminating drive-throughs saying that drive-throughs amount to 80% of business in some cases. There is an additional air quality benefit when vehicles do not idle.

2. Eliminate plastic bags - encourage personal, resusable cloth bags.

3. Standardized containers - for collection, cleaning and reuse. With the end of oil, the end of single-use items is also in site. Allowing vendors to generate single-use items without responsibility only adds to expensive solid waste.

The NSF installation at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica has 37 categories of recyclables. The place stays clean because everyone models high ethics.

 

Maybe the trash could be recycled into more fast 'food'. It would taste about the same, and likely have similar nutritional value.

 

Two subjects I hate.
Hit them in their pocket book, fast-food, littering types pay attention when you take their money. Humans that have the nature of littering and consuming fast food have already eliminated themselves from the "can learn" column. Install ticket cams in reliable violater areas. Post the violaters names on "Keep Iowa Clean" billboards.

 

well coming from phx,AZ. we had red light cameras why not tell the board to install cameras for your litter bugs to be caught on tape and fined, $500.00 is a pretty good " I gotta stop trashing up the joint I'm going broke" attention getter.

It's not the store keepers fault for selling a burger or whatever in a bag/wrapper etc...

if the camera doesn't work a good ole nice person whippen should do or caning as in singapore for graffiti.

I also hate the thrown out cig.butts in the street or parking lots

 

I like robincx's solution above.

But this is a serious problem with our youth, who, uncorrected, will continue to contribute to this problem for many years. I was traveling once on a highway in upstate NY with my nephew, who at the time must have been @ least 9 or 10. He was in the back seat drinking a can of soda. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw him throw something out of the window. I asked him what he just did, and he said, "I got rid of the empty soda can". Screeched to a halt on the shoulder, and made him walk back, pick it up, then hold onto to it until the next rest stop we took.

His rationale was that "someone will pick it up". I explained that he was to be responsible for making sure his trash wound up where it was supposed to go and not to leave it up to others. He's 30 now and still remembers this incident.

 

Nice work, Zen.

I like the caning idea. We need more of that.

 

I don't like litterers. We have an autoparts store across the street, a fastfood place at the end of the street, and a civic center next to us. We find beer cans/bottles, car parts containers and fast food containers regularly when we clean up along our road frontage.

I agree with Robincx. Sure, some of us will set examples and punish misbehavior in our own families but I'm not sure that those of us willing to do so are a majority. So, fines seem to be a reasonable response.

Jim

 

As if "littering" paper, plastic and aluminum cans isn't bad enough, imagine people (kids?, adults?) that actually toss out GLASS BOTTLES, and yes, many beverages in addition to beer still come in glass bottles. Where I used to live in Valrico, Florida, a community of many, many "spoiled" teenagers ($$) there was broken glass on the streets from tossed out beer bottles every friggin' day, especially after weekends in the summer when school was out, etc. When I went to walk my dog, I had to be soooo careful of the glass "slivers and shards" so he would not walk on them, very difficult to see after a rain or a recently irrigated (lawn sprinkler) on the rough sidewalk.

The following is a true story that happened about 40 years ago when I was a teenager in Milford, Connecticut. A couple of kids walking up out residential street in front of our driveway picked up a glass bottle (apparently found on side of road?) and smashed it at the foot of our driveway. I was a "tough guy" (take NO sh*t back then....) ran over to the kids (about 15-16 yrs. old) and grabbed them.... made them pick up all the glass pieces and stuff them in their jacket pockets to bring home. Well, needless to say the next day our house was "egged" pretty badly eating away paint at many spots, as was a vehicle in the driveway (poor folks we were, NO garage) !! So I just couldn't win........ stand up for what is right and I get screwed myself........
As I think back to those days when I was still a "minor", I NOW regret not beating the crap out of those two and pushing their face in the glass.... sounds violet, it probably is, but that is how mad I was (and still am) about the unnecessary breakage of a bottle at the foot of a resident's driveway :angry: :angry:

 

Don't eat fast food! If you don't eat it, you won't have the associated trash to worry about it.

Also, don't drink bottled water. Despite perceptions that it's healthier, there is little difference between bottled water and tap water -- other than that it is about 1,000 times as expensive.

Making all those plastic bottles consumes millions of barrels of oil a year. Transporting all that water, sometimes halfway around the world, consumes even more oil. In the US alone, 1.5 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water every year. And, most of those plastic bottles find their way to a landfill, where they will rest in near-perpetuity.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Swanny1172 @ Jun 28 2007, 11:23 AM) [snapback]469398[/snapback]</div>

We have a whole house de-chlorinating and multi-filter in addition to a reverse osmosis system (both needed here in in this part of Florida, public drinking water) and we actually re-use the original plastic water bottles dozens of time (occasional wasking them out very well) filling with our OWN water. Yep, just as good (maybe ever better) and much, much less $$ than "buying water" in bottles !!

 

The other thing that kills me about bottled water is that the same morons who complain about the price of a gallon of gas think nothing about strolling into the gas station and buying a 16 ounce bottle of water for $1.29. If you do the math, the are paying over $10 per gallon which they can get out of a fountain for free.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ May 27 2007, 10:56 PM) [snapback]450844[/snapback]</div>

We have no fast food franchises in our entire county. Wait a minute, that's not entirely correct. We now have a Subway in a neighboring town. It may be the camel's nose under the tent...

Tom

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Swanny1172 @ Jun 28 2007, 11:32 AM) [snapback]469403[/snapback]</div>

.... better yet, go to an outdoor event that does not allow coolers to be brought in, like an air show or any of the famous Florida "theme parks" and one will pay $3.00 PER "small" bottle of water!! Actually we were at a Jazz concert in Clearwater, Florida (Ruth Eckerd Hall) and noticed that the price for a small bottle of water was $3.00 there too. My Wife is a "runner" (5K events, etc.) and they give away (thanks to sponsors) FREE bottled water, juice, etc. after each exhausting race*.

* this is where we get our water bottles that we refill with filtered tap water B)

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BTW- Have you ever seen the movie Supersize me?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/
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Pthalates in plastic of water bottles leeches into the liquid in the bottle. By using PET bottles you pay much more for water and you get to ingest pthalates. It is not one drink, but the cumulative effect over many years. I only use laboratory-grade plastic bottles (Nalgene) and never use single-use PET bottles.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(skruse @ Jun 28 2007, 01:12 PM) [snapback]469488[/snapback]</div>

ah..... so that is why my Wife has those "special plastic" (Nalgene?) bottles that she uses for running and jogging and WON'T let me use........
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