Eco Peeve Friday: Toxic Yard Trash

Ever since moving to more rural parts of the US, I noticed a huge increase in the careless amounts of toxic trash strewn about people's property. Leaky gasoline cans, motor fluid, anti freeze, rusted bottles of who knows what- I have seen batteries, spray paint cans, soda cans and other toxic metals thrown into creeks that are contaminating the water. Even in places so remote, so pristine and so beautiful you would never expect to come across a sudden dump pile of one family's old appliances, paint cans and billions of plastic bottles. Especially coffee to go cups. GAWD! People let's get real, how hard is it to bring our trash to the designated dumping area in our community!? One of the worst I ever saw was here in the Smokey Mountains, there was a beautiful large river that me and my friends would go swim in (in spite of the water snakes)... it was like a fantasy fairy land for me compared to growing up in dirty New Orleans. Until one day we went for a relaxing day at the river and it was roped off with signs "private property" and the owner had turned it into a dump, literally. Car parts, 18 wheeler parts, trash, metal scraps, and other random shit filled up the bank of the river. Sadness.
Can people of the USA not be educated about the earth, is it so important to teach all our other distortions of history, math, P.E., Grammar and whatever, only for the kids to finally turn to a polluted world to make a future in? Kids of all ages, gender, and class need to know that paper comes from trees, that gasoline isn't good for the soil, that animals and fish eat plastic litter, that pesticides poison our food chain and that WE do have the power to clean up the mess (and certainly to stop making it worse).