WE FILL A RIVIAN R1T WITH GARBAGE FOR EARTH DAY

Earth Day was started on April 22, 1970, as a day to celebrate the beauty and recognize the fragility of this four-billion-year-old rock. Today, some 54 years later, the importance of keeping our environment tidy is greater than ever. Clean Earth's biggest proponent Earthday.org, an organization with more than 150,000 volunteers across 192 countries, is fighting to reduce plastic production by 60 percent by 2040. To do our part, we snapped on our shiniest high-vis jackets and went hunting for roadside junk. Finding spare tires, scratch-off lottery tickets, and a few animal skulls, it didn't take long to fill our Rivian R1T's truck bed and gear tunnel with trash.

For our clean-up efforts, we scanned about a mile of roadway in Oscoda, Michigan, on the outskirts of the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base, where we recently conducted our zero-to-150-to-zero acceleration and braking test. While our one-day effort won't save the planet by itself, we were not alone. Last year, 5437 registered EarthDay.org events took place on Earth Day. The EarthDay.org site makes it easy to collaborate with others or register your own event on their website.

Some efforts to protect the planet, such as keeping drinking water safe and the air clean, can be as politically charged as Grandpa after the eggnog carton runs dry, and they shouldn't be. At the very least, we should all be able to agree that throwing your trash on the side of the road is stupid and if you do it, you're trash too.

Pollution is multifaceted, from tailpipes to chemical spills, but the junk lying on the side of roadways is among the easiest to spot, and there is much of it. According to the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT), they've already collected 89,000 bags of trash since January. ODOT says it spends $10 million annually collecting roadway trash (and that doesn't include the cost of work done on the Ohio Turnpike).

Fines for littering vary by state and severity. For example, in Colorado, litterbugs will see a fine between $20 and $500 for their first conviction, but reckless dumping in Tennessee could net you a felony charge with up to six years of prison time.

Still, trash ends up on the side of the road. Whether it's on purpose or by accident, it's gross. During our brief litter collection in northern Michigan, we found a bunch of interesting stuff. Despite Michigan's Bottle Deposit Law that grants 10 cents per eligible recyclable, we still found a bunch of plastic and glass containers. Hot sauce packets from Taco Bell were another common item. Someone had also apparently lost it all on Triple Tripler $1 scratch-off tickets, then drowned their sorrows with 50-ml bottles of Jägermeister "shooters." In the department of used and dramatically discounted car parts, we found a 13-inch spare wheel, pieces of the front grille of a Chevy, and chrome trim likely missing from a snowmobile or ATV trailer.

Not far from all this waste are some beautiful fishing, hunting, and hiking trails in the Huron-Manistee National Forest. The charcuterie of flattened beer cans and fast-food wrappers is not indicative of the beauty of northern Michigan.

The side of the road is home to enough despair with its flat tires and notoriety as the "most likely place you'll be written an expensive ticket by a person with an unusually large hat." Let's not make it worse. Earth Day may be the one day a year when we collectively recognize the efforts needed to keep our only planet clean, but putting our garbage where it belongs is something we should practice every day.

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2024-04-24T14:44:41Z dg43tfdfdgfd