The Blog Squad

In an effort to increase north Iowa tourism there is a concentrated effort to clean up the countryside. There are areas along the highways where designated groups walk along the ditches and pick up trash on a monthly basis. Instituting a deposit on all soda bottles and cans ten years ago helped tremendously but since then things like bottles of water are starting to be big sellers and they don’t requite a deposit. Many of the containers that don’t require a deposit tend to end up in the Iowa ditches. They aren’t the bulk of items found though, there are a lot of fast food wrappers found and a lot of those plastic grocery bags seem to land in our ditches. Around the first of January there is a marked increase in the number of Christmas trees thrown out. People throw all kinds of garbage into the ditch, including the garbage bag out of the kitchen garbage pail. There have been washers, dryers, stoves, and refrigerators found. It seems there are just some people that don’t care how their road ditches look and are more concerned about how much work it would cost them to correctly dispose of their garbage.