Two weekends ago, inspired by some freakishly warm autumn weather, I spontaneously decided to take a nature walk, reasoning it might be my last opportunity to do so before southern Maine’s six-week spring begins sometime early next May.
Before leaving on my stroll I grabbed a large cloth shopping bag, figuring I would do my small part to beautify the rural thoroughfare by picking up whatever trash I found along the way.
I decided to mosey up one of the two streets in my town that connect the coast with the village’s center. It’s a recently resurfaced road that’s both wide and straight enough for bikers, runners, and hikers to enjoy safely during daylight hours. There wasn’t a lot of traffic that afternoon, and the few cars I encountered along the way gave me plenty of space. In a couple of cases I even received a friendly wave from the driver as a bonus. But the further I walked, the more agitated I became, and by the time I returned home an hour later, I felt anything but relaxed.
Here’s why my walk turned out to be anything but calming: By the time I had gotten to the train tracks my swollen shopping bag contained all of the following items:
”¢ one empty aluminum can which once contained 23.5 ounces of Mike’s Hard Cranberry Lemonade
Ӣ one empty aluminum can which formerly held 24 ounces of Coors Light beer
Ӣ one plastic bottle formerly filled with 16 ounces of Oakhurst Orange Juice
Ӣ three empty 12-ounce Budweiser cans
Ӣ three empty 12-ounce Bud Light cans
Ӣ one empty 24-ounce Heineken can
Ӣ one empty 20-ounce plastic Pepsi bottle
Ӣ two empty 16-ounce cans once filled with Monster Energy Drink
Ӣ one empty 12-ounce glass bottle (Coors)
Ӣ one empty 12-ounce Coors Light aluminum can
Ӣ two empty 12-ounce glass bottles (Coors Light)
Ӣ two empty 12-ounce glass bottles (Heineken)
Ӣ one empty 16.9 oz plastic bottle (Poland Spring water)
Ӣ two empty 12-ounce aluminum cans (Miller Lite)
Ӣ one empty 12-ounce can (Red Bull Energy Drink)
Ӣ one empty 12-ounce can, Hannaford Orange Soda
Ӣ one empty 20-ounce plastic Dr. Pepper bottle
Ӣ two empty 32-ounce plastic Powerade bottles
Ӣ and one unopened 8-ounce plastic bottle of Nestle drinking water, which I quaffed on the way home to keep from overheating either physically, spiritually, or both.
That’s a grand total of 16 aluminum cans, seven plastic bottles, and five glass bottles in just over two miles of walking on a road that doesn’t contain a single establishment where one can purchase liquid refreshment, or anything else, for that matter. And you probably don’t want to know how much more liquid refreshment-related detritus I off-loaded into the trash cans at Twin Brook Park on my way home.
Few problems have easy solutions, but here’s a relatively simple one that might merit consideration. If Maine’s nickel-per-drink-container deposit were raised to, oh, I don’t know, maybe a dime for bottled water, a quarter for anything containing sugar and/or caffeine, and fifty cents for alcohol, it might make the lazy, environment-despoiling segment of our population a bit more mindful of how they dispose of their empties.
Of course, any lawmaker with the spine necessary to introduce such legislation would undoubtedly be smeared by the bottling and distribution lobby as a dangerous radical who’d love nothing more than to turn Maine ”“ and ultimately America ”“ into a nanny state governed by an over-reaching bureaucracy bent on taxing one and all into a state of eternal dependence.
They’d shrilly complain about unjust “new taxes,” although a law requiring higher deposits on beverage containers wouldn’t cost anyone anything as long as they returned each clean bottle or can after having consumed its contents. Beer and soft drink purveyors would also be concerned, though less publicly, that people might not purchase as many of their sugar-laden, caffeine-charged, or alcohol-laced potables as they do currently.
And the problem with that would be what, exactly?
— Andy Young teaches in Kennebunk and lives in Cumberland.
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