Enjoying your local park is always a great way to get out in nature. Unfortunately, park visitors may encounter litter. In this case, one park visitor in Philadelphia stumbled upon a large trash pile full of discarded contractor materials smack in the middle of a path.
"Your unexplained Fairmount Park trash pile of the day," wrote the original poster in r/Philadelphia, a Reddit community about the city.
With the pile full of contractor materials, the community believed that this trash pile was the result of a "contractor who didn't want to pay for a dumpster" and "drove his pickup down the trail and dumped the trash out of his truck bed right there," as one commenter speculated.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that there were 600 million tons of United States construction and demolition waste in 2018. A Yahoo Finance article explained that the "United Nations predicts that by 2050, 68% of the world's population will reside in urban areas, leading to an unprecedented surge in construction activities and C&D waste generation."
The majority of construction waste can be recycled. In fact, Big Rentz reported that 76% of all C&D waste in the U.S. was recovered or recycled in 2018. Thus, leaving piles of waste is difficult to justify. Given the good news that most of it can be recycled, it's important for contractors and all homeowners to know their recycling options.
Illegal dumping also damages ecosystems as chemicals from the waste can leak into groundwater and make it impossible for plants to function properly. It's also simply unpleasant and unsafe for locals to visit their public parks amid piles of waste.
Commenters were furious.
"Do I even need an explanation?" wrote one. "There's no justifying this."
Another Philadelphia resident wrote that protecting the city's parks should be a priority.
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Do you think America does a good job of protecting its natural beauty? Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. |
Definitely 👍 "We have some of the oldest and most beautiful outdoor spaces and most if not all are left to the abuse of the ignorant," they said.
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