Free Republic

It's not an unusual sight. And it's not a pretty sight. Plastic jugs filled with urine are becoming a common sight along the highways, particularly at freeway interchanges. "You wonder what's happening in our society," said Karen Cagle, who supervises highway cleanup crews in Eastern Washington. From March 4 to Nov. 27, 2002, one Adams County highway cleanup crew picked up 2,666 jugs of urine and 67 bags with human excrement in them. That's just one crew out of about 40 crews working in Adams County, and Cagle hasn't yet tallied the results for 2003. But the problem isn't limited...

TAKE A WALK down the Suburban Station steps to the patio at 16th Street and JFK Plaza and you'll find yourself in a wasteland of wasted humans and human waste. There's pee on the patio. Pee on the walls. Pee in the hot summer air. And something much stronger than a pee smell emanating from one fly-swarmed corner. Poop. What used to be an oasis of planters and picnic tables for SEPTA commuters is now a thoroughly-trashed hobo camp where the homeless eat, sleep, urinate and defecate amid their bedrolls and their junk. Inside the Suburban Station concourse, commuters can...

The contents of a Human Waste Packout system are displayed at the Bunny Flat Trailhead at Mount Shasta, Calif., Friday, Sept. 13, 2002. The large target is held down by four rocks. After use the target is sprinkled with cat litter, that comes in the paper bag at right, rolled up and placed in the paper bag, which is put in a plastic bag to be packed out. On Mount Shasta and at a growing number of national forests and parks across the West, climbers are being asked to bag more than peaks as they take the "leave no...