Police Department Advises Against Making a License Plate From a Pizza Box

Whether or not to recycle pizza boxes is a point of endless contention. Some cities say yes, others say no, and despite the city or municipal regulations, buildings like the one I live in still tape angry signs above the recycling bins that say “NO PIZZA BOXES!!!" give or take four exclamation points. Regardless of where you live, you probably shouldn’t recycle that particular piece of cardboard by putting it on the back of your Buick Century sedan.

Over the weekend, the Hopkinton, Massachusetts police department stopped a creative driver who tried to turn a pizza box into his or her license plate and posted a photo of that 100% illegal art project on Facebook. “Here's a little advice to those aspiring to make their own license plates…” the department wrote. “1. Don't. 2. But if you do, make sure not to use cardboard from a pizza box and magic markers.”

And we’d like to add a Number 3: If you’re still going to try to pull this off, maybe use the

right colors

of magic marker. A quick scroll through the Massachusetts DMV’s

license plates page

would’ve shown this genius that all of the state’s current license plates have bright red letters – although there are still a handful of leftover

green plates

, which were last produced in 1987. (We’re TOTALLY KIDDING. In March 2016, police in Buffalo, NY arrested 28-year-old Amanda Schweickert for “forged instruments” even though

she went full Pinterest

when drawing her own cardboard plate.)

Commenters on the Hopkinton PD’s post ranged from being surprised that anyone would do something this dumb to arguing about whether it would’ve been legal if the driver had used his actual plate number. “Keep it up and you'll be able to make real ones … from your state penitentiary,” one man added, probably before repeating the joke to his family for the next seven hours.

The Hopkinton police department says that the driver is facing charges of operating an uninsured and unregistered vehicle, as well as a charge of attaching “fake home made” [sic] plates. We've reached out to the department for comment and will update when we hear back.

But in the meantime, just throw those pizza boxes in the trash from now on. Nobody cares.