The sidewalks and gutters of our cities have been littered with fast food wrappers and soda bottles for decades, but the city of Oakland has had enough of all the garbage, evidently. City officials are considering a tax on the fast food joints and convenience stores that are the source of so much debris that winds up on the streets. The taxes would be used to keep the streets clean.

Business owners are crying foul, and want to know why they should be scapegoated for the sins of their customers. “Littering is a crime, but they're not enforcing the law,” said a representative of the California Restaurant Association. “We need to educate the youths about why littering is bad and the effect litter has on neighborhoods.”

But what about the suburbs, and the small towns? On weekends when I go upstate for some rural r'n'r, I bicycle through the still glorious countryside that inspired the Hudson River School of landscape painters and find the roads littered with Pepsi cans and Doritos bags. It's especially galling given that the Hudson River Valley was the birthplace of the American environmental movement.

The amateur anthropologist in me (what, you don't have one?) is struck by the fact that you never see an empty bottle of Tazo iced green tea, or a Genisoy soy crisp wrapper, tossed along the side of the road. Is this because people who drink iced green tea and eat soy crisps instead of conventional sodas and chips are somehow more enlightened, or is it just because you don't find that stuff at the typical convenience store (yet)? I suspect that the culprits who toss the fragments of their trans-fatty, high fructose corn syrup-filled fuel stops out their car windows have no more regard for the rest of the planet than they do for their own well-being.

So what are we to make of the case of Dawn Higgins, the Pennsylvania woman who was fined $173.50 last week for throwing some lettuce leaves out the window of her car? She intends to appeal the fine on the grounds that because lettuce is biodegradable, it doesn't qualify as litter.

Ms. Higgins had stopped at a McDonald's and bought a salad, but after pulling into a Wal-Mart parking lot to finish her meal, she decided she'd had enough greens, and tossed some leaves onto the pavement. Now, I'm a tireless cheerleader for composting, but I just don't buy Ms. Higgin's use of the Compost Defense. I'll bet she doesn't even own a compost bin; she's just trying to beat the litter rap by jumping on the biodegradable bandwagon. But who knows? Maybe now that Wal-Mart's aspiring to a greener reputation, they might welcome the prospect of people starting compost piles in their parking lots.