Most people would probably appreciate someone throwing a bottle into the recycling bin instead of littering.

This student thought she was doing the right thing while walking home from school with a friend. Seeing a neighbor’s recycling bin sitting out for pickup the next day, she tossed her empty drink bottle inside and kept walking.

Unfortunately, the homeowner did not see it that way.

The man came storming outside yelling at the student, so she decided to solve the problem a different way.

Read on to see where the bottle ended up instead.

Sorry I didn’t litter

Around 2002, I was walking home from high school with one of my friends who lived nearby, and I had just finished drinking a Gatorade or something.

It happened to be recycling day the next day, and a random dude had his bins out early.

I opened this recycling bin and tossed the bottle in, thinking, “Hey, I’m doing my part.”

Suddenly, the owner said something to her.

The guy, an older white male, must’ve been looking out of his front window or something and came out to yell at me for messing with his recycling bin.

I apologized, walked back, and threw the bottle on his lawn.

He started yelling at me some more, but my friend and I just kept walking. What an insane thing to be mad about.

Yikes! It’s probably best to leave people’s things alone.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an apartment tenant who is being called petty for blocking her parking space with trash cans.

Let’s see what the readers think about what happened here.

This person is not impressed.

According to this reader, someone cost their parents money by doing this.

This is an excellent point.

For this reader, she did the right thing.

The homeowner definitely overreacted, but throwing the bottle onto his lawn afterward was not the right move either.

The fact is that it was still his recycling bin sitting on his property, and the student probably should have just kept carrying the bottle or asked first instead of assuming it was fine.

One rude reaction does not suddenly make littering okay.

Really, this whole thing could have ended with a simple “please don’t do that again.”