Mountain Dew. Vitamin Water. Coca Cola (2). Bud Light. Bud. Red Bull.

No these are not beverages I consumed but these are the beverage containers I saw on the side of the road this morning when I went for a short run. I usually run through our woods but the deer flies have arrived en masse and so I hit the road. I was surprised how many empty containers I saw in just around a mile and a half.

 The trash dropped me back to the mid seventies when I was a budding environmentalist (my graduation speech at Traip Academy on the environment talked about the damage those plastic six-pack holders can cause to unsuspecting wildlife) and advocate of the Maine bottle bill, which was enacted in 1976 and implemented in 1978 (see www.bottlebill.org for the Bottle Bill Resource guide). Once the bottle bill was implemented, anecdotal evidence as I rode horses along the roadways (an increasingly dangerous activity that I do little of these days) was that it did have an impact on diminishing roadside trash.

I don't understand the nature of people who would throw things out their car windows, but I do know that most everyone has more respect for things that have monetary value. So if you can get a nickel back for something, even an empty bottle, you don't toss it out the window on some back road.

And if you would, there is still someone would find it worthwhile to redeem those cans I saw this morning--and they would come along every once in a while and collect them and redeem them. And they wouldn't be littering the roadside.

These weren't bottles I was seeing. I don't know if plastic bottles are redeemable anywhere. Most were cans, which are redeemable in Maine. Not in New Hampshire. New Hampshire has fought hard to avoid something like the bottle bill or anything that would add a cost of even pennies to beverage purchases; opponents claim that a bottle bill would destroy New Hampshire's advantage over surrounding states when it comes to the cost of beverages.  

I'm proud of our Live Free or Die slogan. But it doesn't say Litter Free or Die.

Cheryl Kimball is a writer/editor living in Middleton, New Hampshire.