Littering is literally out of hand

I bought a reacher/grabber tool from Home Depot today ($21 after tax) and took my dog for a walk along Rockdale Circle in the area between Skyland Drive and Rockdale Circle) I took a kitchen sized trash bag along, and within 10 minutes, I needed another bag. If you could see the sheer volume of the stuff, you would be shocked. The bag was so heavy, I had to hoist it over my shoulder to walk home with it.

What I found:

Many Styrofoam cups, lids, and straws
Cigarette butts
Fast food paper cups (Mostly Burger King, some McDonalds, 1 Starbucks)
1 tube of lip gloss
Bojangles chicken box
Paper and styrofoam plates
Clear plastic cake containers
Clear plastic 8 oz cups with lids
Many types of plastic bottles
Many types of aluminum cans

It looks like people just hurl their trash out the window as they take the curve. The aluminum can that irritated me was the one for an energy drink. If you drink an energy drink, wouldn't it give you enough energy to hang onto the can until you got to a trash can?

It was an interesting exercise - and that's what it was mainly - exercise. I need to exercise but it needs to have a purpose. I can't walk just to walk, if you know what I mean. So I'm not posting about this to get praised that I picked up trash. I needed to walk and walk the dog anyway.

But it was shocking how much I found, and I just scratched the surface of what's there. I finally had to tell myself that there would be more trash there for another day.

I do think that once there is trash in an area, then people don't feel bad about throwing their trash on top of it. It looks like "everyone does it." If we could all take a bag and a pik-stik with us as we walked, what would Snellville look like?

I'm going to get my 6-year-old son going with the grabber stick tomorrow. He'll enjoy picking out the cans and plastic bottles from the bag to put them into our recycling bin. What seems like work to adults can be really fun to a kid with a grabber.

(If you want to get a pick-up tool, you can find the Unger "Nifty Nabber' tool in the garden tool department by the rakes. It's really easy to pick up stuff without bending, and you don't have to touch it with your hands.)

You don't have to do this on a busy roadway either...you can do this in your own neighborhood. The surprised and pleased looks from the neighbors are pretty motivating.

Snellville Trash Pick Up - WHAT is the deal?!?

Have you wondered why the trash guys from Robertson's Sanitation won't pick up that extra trash bag that you had set beside your trash bin? Did you think they were sight impaired or just lazy?

So the next pickup day, you decided to put the extra trash bag on TOP of your trash bin. The trash guys just picked it up and set it down on the ground and left it....the same amount of energy it would have taken them to just throw it into the truck!

So you got extra annoyed and just mutter about how nobody does their job anymore. Well guess what....yes, they actually WERE doing their job!

If your trash does not fit inside the trash bin, then it is not going to be picked up. The solution is to buy the special blue trash bags - available for approximately $25 for a box full of them. You buy them at Publix or Kroger. You buy them at the Customer Service desk. "twenty five bucks for a box of plastic trash bags!!" you shout in disgust...

Well no...the price isn't for the trash bags...technically. It's for the extra trash pickup service associated with the bags. I like to think of it as 'postage' for my trash.

It used to be here in Snellville that you had a choice of BFL or Robertson's Sanitation to pick up your trash. BFL was a bit more pricey, but their trucks were cleaner and drove more safely through the neighborhood, so I went with them. Now Robertson's has the contract with the City of Snellville for waste removal. It is nice that the pickup is 'free' (the cost is in our homeowner taxes I suppose). It's no extra payment if you can get all your trash in a bin. I went for the larger bin, so it costs me $25 per Quarter. Once I get my youngest two children out of Pull Ups and diapers, I'm going to try to downsize our trash bin so I won't have to pay the $25.

Oh but back to the blue trashbags. You can put your trash in them, or you can tie them to a larger item you want to dispose of. We don't have a large item disposal day like some cities. Just attach some blue bags to your item and they'll pick it up. A piece of furniture takes about 3 bags, a refrigerator you might want to call the city and ask, but I'm guessing 5 bags on something big like that.

Don't want to pay for the bags? You can deliver and drop off the item(s) yourself at the Snellville Recycling Center. It's located in the back area of Briscoe Park off of Lenora Church Road in Snellville.