Nice Try Dumping Your Trash

[An Haddock]

We had something along these lines happen near our town recently.


There's a nice-sized lake nearby surrounded with a park and jogging track. Well, over the last several months or more someone's been dumping 20 - 30 pounds worth of stale donuts there.


This is not a good thing as:

a. sugary treats are bad for the wildlife

b. it can attract rats, pigeons, seagulls or other pests


So after contacting the appropriate people, the parks police staked out the park and caught the guy in the act. He works at a Dunkin Donuts a few blocks from the park and was dumping old donuts at 6:30 in the morning. He was fined by police ($150 as I recall) and the police are apparently going to talk to the store's owner. (who will probably deny any connection with the incident)

It just pisses me off a bit, because it really seems like the guy got off with a slap on the wrist. True, they can't prove it was him doing it for the last few months, but I would think they might try to get some sort of cruelty to animals charge against him, at least. (he might be able to claim ignorant that he didn't know donuts were bad for wildlife, but when the cops caught him and examined the trash bag he was dumping, there were old hairnets and other trash mixed in with the donuts - yuck.


So they caught at least 1 person who had been illegally dumping at the park... but if they can prove the business owner was involved, too, hopefully they'll fine him for it as well.

[Moirae]

lol Paybacks a bitch.

[Shalom]

In New York, if they catch someone dumping illegally, they can impound his vehicle. Be funny if the cops told this jerk that he'd be walking back home...

[protege]

Except in many communities you have to pay for garbage pickup. So if you don't pay for it, the garbage folks won't haul away your trash.

In my borough, trash disposal fees are included in the sewage bills. If you don't pay the bill, you can end up with a lien (or worse ) against the property. Other areas, like the area where my grandmother had her farm...charge an arm and a leg for trash pickup. That's one reason why most people (my family included) would simply burn their trash. Others...didn't give a shit, and would dump it wherever. That's why there are so many illegal dumps down there, and why the EPA goes nuts when it finds them.

[Moirae]

Its actually legal to burn your trash?

[Catwoman2965]

My ex next door neighbor, a man I less than affectionately refer to as The Shitbird Next Door

Hehehe - this made me laugh - I'll have to remember it.

A friend of mine who used to live in my complex got fined for putting his bag of trash on the ground right next to the dumpster; as it was so full, nothing would fit in it. He had also left mail in the bag which is how they figured out it was his! So he wasn't really that sucky, as there wasn't anywhere to put it.

[protege]

Its actually legal to burn your trash?

In rural SW PA, yes. As long as you're not creating a smokescreen next to a highway...or accidentally starting a brush fire (common in summer), it's totally legal. When Grandma had the farm, she didn't have garbage service. Quite a few people outside of the town (3 miles away) didn't have it either. Most people simply took their trash into one of their fields, and lit it. The ash that remained, was then raked into the soil as fertilizer. Crude, but effective at putting nitrogen back into the soil

Once I had my workshop there, I did it for a different reason. It got pretty cold in the barn, and having a roaring fire kept my ass warm as I ran trains

Can't do that in the 'burbs around Pittsburgh though. The cops would be on you so fast, it's not even funny. Still, some people do attempt to burn their trash, and they do get busted for it.

[Yarnil]

Here in the Netherlands, you can't burn trash, because the smoke isnt healthy, but you can burn oil soaked wood......

And I did get fined once, because someone took my trasbag out of the contaier so she/he could put his/hers in it...... SOB's