It is spring, but there are still snow patches here and there,
too early in the year for the highway angels
to be picking up the highway litter.
One might wonder what the most frequently seen garbage is
at the side of the highway in Canada.
By a large margin, the advantage goes to
Tim Horton’s cups and bags.
Very quickly, by noticing the concentrations of the
Tim Horton’s litter on the side of the highway,
I can calculate how long it will take me to walk
to the next Tim Horton’s. I estimate that drivers
will finish their coffees in 15-20 minutes before
tossing the garbage out of their windows.
Fifteen to twenty minutes of driving along a
100-km-per-hour highway will take drivers 25-33 km,
which I can walk in 4-5 hours. My estimates
prove to work out well and my mouth starts to salivate
after four hours, even when I cannot yet see
the Tim Horton’s ahead. Along the highway,
I also see dozens and dozens of water bottles filled with urine,
likely thrown out of windows of semis or delivery trucks.
At first, I think this an act of many truck drivers,
but after some thought, I realize that all of those urine-filled
bottles could have come from a single truck driver
over the course of a long winter.
I pity the people that will end up cleaning it up.
The second most frequently seen garbage?
Banana peels. Strange, but at least some drivers
are eating healthily enough.
