This morning, I experienced something infuriating. I was sitting at a red light and I watched just the car in front of me, like 2019 Lexus, by the way, rolled down their window, stick out an arm and fling their greasy McDonald's bag filled with garbage and empty soda cans all over the sidewalk. Just out of instinct, I slammed on my horn with one hand and made the universal what-the-fuck gesture with the other.

They did not respond.

For a moment, I actually considered stepping out of my car and scooping up all the stron egg-mic muffin entrails into a pile and just delivering it back to them through their open window.

Then I remembered that we live in America where people have guns, and I decided this wasn't really a situation worth escalating.

The light turned green and the driver sped off.

Laughing maniacally, I assume, while slurping ketchup off their fingers,

and I just sat in my car fuming.

It feels like there's few small acts that seem to breach the social contract like littering does.

Dumping your garbage on the ground is illegal, technically, but it's treated more like a

character indictment than a crime.

If I saw someone shoplifting in Walmart, I'd look the other way.

If I saw them drop a handful of rappers in the aisle, I'd ask them why they think they're

better than the custodian who has to pick it up.

Any old Joe Schmo can rob a bank, but it takes a real scumbag to leave

your trash all over a hiking trail. As a society, however, we didn't always feel this way.

Littering only became a public issue in the States after World War II when disposable containers

first began to flood the market. It only became a real taboo 20 years later, and not because

tree-hugging hippies felt strongly that Americans must hold their garbage until

they find the nearest dumpster.

When our rivers and our forests and our sidewalks started overflowing with trash, environmentalists

at the time actually went straight to the source.

And they demanded that corporations stop making single-use packaging.

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