Far and away I pick up more facial tissues on the trail than any other type of litter. Just the other day I picked up four in one day. The photo to the right depicts one of them. So I feel compelled to insist that tissues are trash. I simply don’t understand what people are thinking. Do they imagine that tissues decompose within a few days of hitting the ground? Well, they don’t. Do they simply not care? Probably.

But if you toss your tissue you’re making me pick it up. And I pick them up, despite potentially exposing myself to disease. After spending the first five years of my childhood on an Indiana farm ingesting all kinds of microbes, I now have an immune system made of iron and antibodies. But that doesn’t make it OK for you to toss your tissues.

Tissues are trash. Carry out whatever you carry in.