Caution: furniture up ahead
It seems everyone who’s even the slightest bit DIY-inclined can tell you a [found it on the] side-of-the-road story these days. More and more people are discovering abandoned gems via Craigslist and (literally) picking up on the trash-turned-treaure potential that constantly lurks along city curbs—a wonderful phenomenon as far as we here at reuse-minded ReadyMade are concerned. But I was shocked to learn that the movement also has a dark side. Consider this New York Times quotation of the day:
“People are real casual here. If it’s not raining, someone says, ‘let’s get some string and tie the box spring to the roof rack.’ It’s carelessness and utter stupidity.”
That’s what driver Phil Linhares, who recently dodged a chrome dinette set while cruising down one of California’s state highways, told reporter Patricia Leigh Brown when she interviewed him for today’s front-page story, Highway Debris, Long an Eyesore, Grows as Hazard. It’s an interesting—and extremely scary—article about the increasing amount of unintentional litter that’s being found on California freeways.
“Untentional litter” covers anything—from improperly secured furniture to piled-too-high-on-the-truckbed building material—that ends up, “thanks to the laws of physics,” as roadside debris. The estimate currently sits at 140,000 cubic yards per year in California alone, and the problem exists nationwide. What’s more, accidentally dropped loads not only amount to millions of dollars per year in clean-up costs, but present a considerable danger to motorists.
So.
Hear, hear! Rescuing another man’s trash to create your own treasure is a lovely, lovely thing. Just make sure you’re not polluting the road with your project materials along the way!
