For Easter we did an impromptu road trip to Nova Scotia; this was in lieu of an earlier planned Christmas trip that we had to postpone because we were stranded by storms. Both ferries were down so this was a “land-only” journey.
I’d like to be able to say the drive was pleasant, enjoyable, beautiful… amazing. But, the side of the road in New Brunswick is REALLY REALLY disturbing.
It’s littered with bottles of pee (from truck drivers… it’s a terrible problem in the US), diapers, garbage (bags and bags of garbage), dead wildlife (the province is very wild), Tim Hortons cups (really… is it so hard to keep an empty cup in your car until you can get to a garbage can?) and other things that I don’t want to talk about… but I can never unsee (like dead, discarded family pets).
When we drove across Canada we saw no other province that was this bad. In their defence: N.B. is trying to clean-up. During both drives, we saw work crews and big trucks cleaning the roadside shoulder! There’s just so much garbage and people keep adding to it.
It’s not just the highways… it’s the rural roads too! During one drive through beautiful, barely touched, backcountry, we constantly saw passing locals throw Tim Horton’s cups out the window of their vehicles. Why would you even do that? Disposable coffee cups are garbage and can’t even be put into a recycling bin because they are lined with plastic. This problem was perpetuated when Tim Hortons got rid of it’s drive through trash cans.
It’s sad to see the backcountry roads of New Brunswick looking the same as the downtown streets of Montréal. It seems the people of New Brunswick don’t care about their beautiful home.
Actually Tim Horton’s stopped lining their cups with plastic and in Nova Scotia they are recyclable. In each outlet they have a recycle bin where you can sort plastics, organics, and garbage. The cups are recycled into the paper mache cup holder trays you get at Tim Horton’s. Not sure about other provinces.