A family disposed of thousands of pounds of dirty diapers in the backcountry of a British Columbia forest.
As Global News reported, volunteers with the nonprofit Okanagan Forest Task Force had to clean it all up, hauling the massive collection of soiled diapers and other garbage out in a dump trailer.
The family reportedly lived in the hills and had eight members, including six children. This is not the first time the task force cleaned up after them. Volunteers have needed to follow the family as they move from one location to another, leaving their trash behind for someone else to deal with.
"There's probably close to doing 800 to 1,000 pounds of used diapers," one volunteer, Kane Blake, said, per Global News. "The smell is not fantastic, especially during the summer days, and a lot of these dumpsites, they've had time to sit there and cook in the sun."
It is important to sympathize with and try to help families going through tough times, especially ones with innocent children without access to a stable home. However, illegally dumping excessive trash poses severe risks to human health and the environment.
Garbage containing human waste attracts pests and vermin while polluting the soil and harming wildlife. The waste can also seep into nearby waterways and contaminate drinking water.
Illegal dumping decreases the quality of life for people who frequent those areas, discouraging outdoor recreation and creating noxious odors. Residents fed up with illegal dumping must unfairly rely on their own volunteer efforts, exposing themselves to health hazards and making up for others' disappointing disrespect for nature.
Public reactions to this news story were a mix of concern for the children and utter disgust for the family's diaper dumping.
"Why hasn't the family been hauled to the dump sites and forced to clean it up themselves?" one Reddit user asked in a post about the news.
🗣️ Do you think America has a plastic waste problem?
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🔘 Not really 👎
🔘 I'm not sure 🤷
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Another wrote: "Somehow, they are acquiring diapers living in the woods. So they can dispose of them correctly."
"Landfills should be free and ideally open as often as possible," someone else wrote. "Not sure if it's what happened here, but fees and inconvenient hours discourage some people from disposing of their trash properly. It doesn't make it okay but it's what's happening."
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