WHAT HAVE WE PICKED UP FROM THE FREEWAYS DURING A TRASHATHON???
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THE ORDINARY STUFFAbout 10% of what we pick up is recyclable
plastic and glass bottes and aluminum cans! If we included the recyclable paper and cardboard,
MILLIONS of cigarette butts! Hundreds of empty cigarette packets [Some smokers are such slobs]
plastic bags
Lots and lots of balls, including soccer balls
toys
Lots of car parts, including tires windshields (usually shattered) An auto windshield, cracked, complete with the rubber gasket
All kinds of clothing: [A lot of the dirty but usable clothing we take home, wash, and give to a local charity] sweatshirts vests hats and caps rings, earrings, necklaces underwear (men's and women's)
pillows towels
plastic and metal buckets pieces of heating ducts sheetrock
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THE EXTRAORDINARY STUFF[Some photos at the bottom of the page]
Several unopened rolls of paper towels An unopened 100-count package of napkins A broken computer monitor A broken television A baked potato A curly blond wig
Lots of parking tickets. Apparently some people think if they throw away parking tickets they don’t have to pay them
A smashed video cassette that trailed tangled tape for 30 yards among the bushes
Two chest x-rays for Daniel M____ taken the day before the trash pickup at O'Connor Hospital. In the manila envelope, undamaged. We returned them to O'Conner Hospital. How the heck did they wind up on the side of the freeway?
A cover letter and a resume from a woman living in Berkeley who had left teaching and was looking for a job in the ministry. The letter was sent to a church in Los Altos and the two pages were found on the median strip of Meridian Avenue in San Jose near the Southwest Expressway. Oh, and the letter was dated 1988! Hundreds of memo pads destined for the Maple Tree inn in Sunnvyale. A box containing them had broken open and the pads tore apart and scattered over hundreds of yards of freeway! A blue plastic box full of old car parts [Photo below]
A *very* old beer can (see photos below). You can see from the remains of the label it was a can of “Busch Bavarian Beer.” It had the old detachable pull-tab that was banned in the early 1970s. I did a little research at www.beercollections.com and learned that “Busch Bavarian Beer was introduced in 1955... In 1979 Anheuser-Busch dropped the word Bavarian from the brand name.” Based on that information, I’m guessing that beer can had been hiding in the ivy around The Alameda on-ramp for over 25 years!
A large hard black plastic Craftsman Toolbox full of power tools! A rubber pig (no kidding! [Photo below]
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MONEY!We find money all the time on the freeway, usually dollar bills.
Sometimes we find more. Sometimes we find a LOT more!
A $5 bill in a paper bag
Two $5 bills and a dollar bill folded into a receipt
A $20 bill in a McDonald's bag!
A phone card with 14 minutes left on it!
Four coins in a ten foot area that, while obviously quarters, were so bent, mangled and scarred as to be unusable (see photo below)
I found a $100 bill behind the yellow sand barrels between the Leland on-ramp and 280NB!
A $50 bill was found by a high school student working to get community service credits for high school graduation.
Working on Highway 17, a volunteer found a $100 bill. On the same day another volunteer working in the same area found another $100 bill and four $20 dollar bills!
Below is one day's "haul"
MORE PHOTOS HERE! |
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| Three photos of boxes with beer bottles -- still full -- left on the side of the road | ||
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Yes, that's an empty bottle on the gore point between the on-ramp and the freeway... just sitting there.... |
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| MORE PHOTOS HERE! | ||
