Medicine Hat Media

Littering

A couple of days ago as I was on my merry way home to my farm roughly thirty miles outside of The Hat, listening to some tunes, enjoying the scenery when I noticed an obnoxious blemish. Someone had driven ten miles out of the city to abandon their dumpy couch. I have to wonder what this individual was thinking when they decided to spread their refuse across an otherwise beautiful piece of scenery. Perhaps they thought magical garbage fairies periodically clean the sides of highways, or maybe they just don’t really care that the side of that road is pretty much the equivalent of a few dozen people’s backyard. The furnace at my house is about to crap out, I might consider loading it into the back of a truck and dropping it off in Kin Coulee when its life is finally over, that makes about as much sense as abandoning it on the side of the highway.

This seems to be becoming a fairly regular occurrence as washers, dryers, Realtor signs and the like seem to find their way into the ditches of rambling country roads. It almost seems illogical to me. These items can hardly be loaded into a fuel-efficient Honda Civic, therefore these litterers are spending more than a pretty penny driving their large vehicles this far out of the city to dodge the $5 charge at the city dump. Although I am by no means an Al Gore-style environment enthusiast I would like to encourage people to use the city landfill so we can at least let our disgusting garbage congregate in a place where it isn’t such a nuisance to rural inhabitants, perhaps we’ll even save a few dollars in gas money while we’re at it.

The Medicine Hat Municipal Landfill is open Monday to Friday 8-6 and Saturday and Sunday 8-5 right through to the 31st of October and with a very low standard $5 charge with some additional charges depending on what is being dumped let’s do our best to use it!

User Comments

6 Responses to “Littering”

  1. June 11th, 2009 at 9:48 AM


    travis says:

    It’s really sad. The company I work for used to work for the Palliser Air Shed Society. As part of my work for them I had to drive all through the Palliser region in the middle of nowhere.

    We had 20 sites in remote locations. No lie, pretty much EVERY site, usually just in the middle of a country gravel road, had at least one beer can laying in the ditch.

    At any rate, I completely agree, $5 is nothing. And we need to remember that even though it may be ‘the middle of nowhere’ to us, its still someone’s neighborhood and we should treat it as such.

  2. June 11th, 2009 at 10:19 AM


    Dusty says:

    All environmental issues aside, I find humor in a couch being on the side of a long deserted road. Giving hikers and travelers a place to sit very randomly … Or as I imagine it, it sounds that it would be symbolically beautiful in a photograph – like for a CD cover.

    I do think it’s possible that the driver didn’t notice it fell out, people listen to music pretty loud, if it looks like it was intently put to the side then perhaps the next person who came along moved it for others.

    I do care about the environment, I do think we should protect it’s beauty by not dumping on it or chopping it up. I also have my own personal views on the matter, like how global warming isn’t actually a problem. (It’s been proven to naturally occur in earths history over and over again in cycles like hot house and ice age) I’m also neurotic about never littering at any cause, I’ll keep garbage in my purse/pocket for as long as I have to because I just don’t lack that conscious thought. Here’s a paraphrase from a Ticked Off & Tickled Pink comment:

    Don’t litter people, you lose a part of your soul every time you do. Feeling weak, litter bugs?

  3. June 11th, 2009 at 10:35 AM


    Taylor says:

    Of course its completely possible and entirely expected that garbage and that falls out of the back of vehicles but when its a couch like, upside down with Realtor and construction signs piled on top its a very clear act of littering. Not to mention random appliances seems to find their away to the country every couple of months and I’ve caught many people in the act. It’s pretty sad overall and hopefully people will smarten up over it sometime, since “we’re all sharing this planet”.

  4. June 11th, 2009 at 12:03 PM


    Vaughn says:

    @Dusty

    Yes, but in this case, if things fall out, they don’t randomly end up in the ditch, they fall on the road and stay there unless somebody pushes it off afterwards. Once the driver realizes that it fell out, they would go back for it – if they cared that is. So, in which case It’s obviously intended and they are obviously littering and being dicks about it like Taylor pointed out; albeit, with nicer words 🙂

  5. June 11th, 2009 at 1:27 PM


    Sean says:

    I find it awkwardly funny when I drive in the country, or even just on the TransCanada, and see shoes put onto fence posts along the way. Who does that and why? I never understood why they were there. It’s almost like the country fashion of trying shoes together and tossing them up on a power line, because someone actually has to make the effort to do that. Although maybe there’s a country reason for it that someone from the city like myself doesn’t immediately understand?

    In regards to Dusty’s photography idea, I think that’s a pretty cool idea, and totally what I can imagine seeing (and have seen, just not on CD covers). Kind of reminds me of the time Von and/or Nadine and I went to take pics of farms and abandoned farm houses. Actually once place near Taylor’s house, which is abandoned, has writing on the walls inside the house that talks about death coming, and the writing looks almost like blood. Kind of peculiar.

    Taylor omitted mentioning the fact that her brother picked up said couch to dispose of.

    And I think a rusted out furnace in Kin Coulee would be a good environmental statement to the city, or to all cities.

  6. June 11th, 2009 at 2:15 PM


    Dusty says:

    Or … we could get the couch and the furnace … and washer/dryers and a sink and do an installation of garbage in Kin Coulee but it would be set up like a complete house without walls … and made of garbage … (Sounds like a pretty rad idea, any takers from Vis Comm on the installation project?)

    Occasionally I’ve seen the prisoners walking down the highway (Suffield direction) picking up trash, maybe requests could be made?

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