> I do Adopt-A-Highway cleanup on our town's only main road once a month with the Venturing Crew.
> Around here, in redneck country, the most common litter item is chewing tobacco containers, although Svenhard's wrappers and dirty diapers (along with the ever-present soda pop cans and paper/styrofoam cups) also abound. We've found baby shoes, yards and yards of rope, and empty chicken or cattle feed bags. Once, we found the plastic packaging to a Nintedo system, but alas, no Nintendo. One girl even found a cell phone. We managed to return it to its owner. She said she had put it on he hood of the car to get her child in, and forgot the phone was there. When she took off, away it flew. She sure was glad to get it back!
>
> I don't know why people litter or otherwise deface areas. It's really not that hard to put the garbage in your car and throw it out when you get home.
>
> La"I don't understand Newton's Rings, either, but that's another post"Zorra


People dont feel responsible if they are not caught and punished. If they are, then it's the punishers fault anyway.

I live by a High School. One day, I was watching as a student finsihed a cup of something and tossed the cup casually to the side. Many other students were present. Many cars also, since we were waiting for a light. I honked. I yelled, words including but not limited to 'slob'. I flipped him off. He kept walking.

I rarely act like this. Now my son knows how low I think this behavior is. When he is a teen, he will probably rebel and liter. Hopefully, with this knowledge, he will grow out of it. Too bad other people don't.

As for kids in car seats............they throw things out the window. Mom is busy driving and can't do anything about it. We wouldn't want her to. Moms that are busy momming are more hazardous than cell phone talkers trying to check their callenders.

The really little ones just do stuff. They don't know why they do it. When they are a little older, they get angry that Mom is unavailable. She is busy driving. Usually when they drop something, she stops to pick it up and give it back. Little kids love to be handed things. They throw stuff on the ground all the time. People pick it up, they throw it right back down. Then they are upset that it is on the ground, but if you give it to them, they throw it right back down. They continue this behavior even if mom is busy driving. They want her attention. You can't consider this to be litering because it never occurs to babies at the moment they throw it that they will not get it back, or that it will reamin there on the ground when it is out of sight. The condept of object permanence comes much later than the ability to throw.

Babies get caught up in cause and effect. So they do stuff. And they are constantly trying to get the parents attention. It's programmed into them. "In the wild," babies who let their parents ignore them are most likely to get eaten by something or stolen or simply left somewhere. Constantly being the parents' center of attention is a survival trait. In this repect, negative attention (getting in trouble) is better than no attention.