I hate it when I find litter in the wilderness.

A lot of junk can be burned and I’m sure a lot of it is ultimately burned by campers up in the woods. But the rest of it should be taken home for recycling. Steel cans and aluminum cans are marketable commodities, a raw material for the same kind of industrial processes that brought them onto this earth in the first place. I’m fine with people burning out cans to clean them out but they should be crushed and taken home for recycling. Glass shouldn’t really be burnt in the back country as all it does is turn into smaller fragments, and is hard to clean up.

I don’t like landfills and municipal incinerators as the respiratory for waste. Things should be recycled rather than littered – especially if it’s not going to burn up completely or rot away. Gut piles and food scraps left in the woods are fine but they shouldn’t be left in areas where they are a nuisance by attracting wildlife to trails and campsites.

I like the wilderness, and I use some of its resources. I use paper plates, have a propane heater and electric lights, and I might even burn some of my trash. But I always pick up any bottles and cans I find in the woods and try to remove as much litter as practical. Larger things I’ve found left from other I’ll leave out by roads for municipal clean up as that stuff isn’t always practical to take home.

While I think it’s foolish to pretend to be leaving no trace – camping, hiking, hunting and fishing all have impacts on the land – I do try to tread lightly and use the land responsibly so it remains usable for generations to come.