All of us have been driving along and seen litter blowing out of the back of someones pickup truck.

It amounts to somewhere near a third of all the litter along the highways. We all know how it happens. The driver or his helper carefully stashes the the trash in the back of the truck and then the wind blows it out onto the side of the highway.

Several states have programs to give out mesh bags and awareness programs to retrain pickup drivers. Here is one in Texas and another in South Carolina. But they don’t seem to be having much of an effect yet.

But if someone who had much more contact with pickup truck drivers took on the problem it could have a dramatic effect. This is an opportunity for Home Depot or Lowes to do a civic good, create an immense amount of goodwill and put their name in the back of half the pickup trucks in America. All they have to do is publicly through advertising, promotions and public relations take steps to reduce pickup truck litter. It needs a good slogan, lots of free bags for collections and places to empty them.

Slogan idea: “Cleaning up America’s highways one pickup at a time.” Which explains why I’m the Ideapreneur not the creative director at an ad agency.