Oklahoma's roadside trash cans get mixed-bag reviews

Fast-food bags, soda bottles and cigarette butts lie near the metal trash can. Its plastic lining waves in the wind.

The yellow barrel sits on an Interstate 35 off ramp, tilted slightly so motorists can toss garbage out their windows as they wait at a stop sign. Problem is, many people miss. Others don't even try, preferring instead to pitch their trash into ditches and medians while the garbage can remains empty.

Barrels suspended from iron bars at Interstate exit roads are part of the state Transportation Department's annual $4 million campaign to clean up Oklahoma, but they aren't working as well as officials had hoped. Other efforts, including an annual spring cleanup and the Adopt-A-Highway program, are more successful.

Maintenance crews have removed several trash cans since they put them up 12 years ago. Some were collecting too much household garbage. Others had more trash around them than inside of them.

"If our crews can't get to them soon enough, then it's worse than if we didn't have them at all," said Joanne Orr, beautification coordinator for Transportation Department. "People would call and say the barrels are a great idea, but it looks terrible."

Roadside cans only work for people who are stopped right next to them and can take time out from driving to get rid of their trash. "Not everybody aims too well," Orr said. "It's hard for people to hit them."

The Oklahoma wind picks up what doesn't make it in the barrels, bouncing it across the grasslands to lodge in chain-link fences, creeks and brush. Sometimes trash from the cans blows out, spilling along the road.

Ben Janloo, owner of a Conoco station near two of the trash cans off Interstate 44, said he doesn't think people even aim for yellow barrels. "It's pig-style," he said. "People don't care. They go by the trash can and throw stuff on the ground. And they never come back and pick it up." Janloo and his crew pick up trash 10 to 15 times per day by the gas pumps. Some of it blows from the roadside trash cans a few yards away from his parking lot.

"Don't even ask about cigarette butts," he says, tearing a tiny piece of paper out of his cash register. "If a thousand people drive through a day and each one leaves a piece of paper this big, what a mess!"

He said responsible drivers are the ones who wait until they get to a gas station or their house before they empty garbage out of their car.

Stephen Powell, who cruised through Oklahoma recently on his way home to New Mexico, says he would never try to toss garbage into a roadside can while driving. "They look absolutely useless to me," said Powell.

Jackie Robinson, a convenience store clerk, has been known to use the yellow cans in extreme situations. "I've got my daughter's dirty diaper right there," she said. "Open the door and bam. I don't want to have that in the car."

Bret McIntyre, a transportation assistant division engineer, said he thinks the cans prevent at least some littering. The barrels in the Oklahoma City area are emptied once a day and most of them are about one-third full, he said. "Somebody is using them."

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