Tim Hortons customers the biggest pigs around?

On my way to work today I decided to count the number of take out coffee cups I see thrown on the ground. I counted 32 Tim Hortons and 0 Starbucks. Everyone trashes on Starbucks but it seems to me Tim Hortons customers generates the most amount of street trash. I dare say, this is such a common sight in Toronto you probably don't even notice it these days. But look around. Look down.

It's sad because my generation was raised with the "give a hoot, don't pollute, don't be a litter bug" message. The thought of throwing trash onto the street, instead of retaining it in some capacity and disposing of it properly, would make me sick in a kind of Clockwork Orange sort of way. It's weird the environmental message these days seems to have leap frogged something as common as "don't shit up your neighborhood" with "ohhh we got to get those corporations to stop with the global warming". James Cameron overflies the oil sands and that's huge news but the biggest daily eyesore street trash gets ignored by the public, press, and politicians.

No drop of water thinks it caused the flood, eh?

The city of Toronto has a 5 cent bag fee. Apparently to keep plastic grocery bags out of landfill. Although it makes me wonder what people use to throw out their garbage if not a plastic bag that looks deceptively like a grocery store bag.

It seems to me for the sake of consistency, the city of Toronto should institute a 20 cent per cup deposit. We have it on bottles, wine bottles, etc.

The beauty of this deposit system is over night you'll get an industry of street people collecting these things and returning them in bulk for cash. Heck, at 20 cents a cup, I saw $6 lying on the ground on my way to work.

(Now of course Tim Hortons is not the only guilty party. Their customers might not be any more piggish than Starbucks or Second Cup. My informal, one day visual survey is in no way scientific. But I might suggest Tims is the leader in take out coffee and hence is a valid target to be named and shamed and take the actual lead in finding some way to deal with this blight.)