Debris is Everyone’s Problem

I live in the pristine high mountains of Colorado part of the year. Trash is nowhere nearly as plentiful as it is around my city digs. Perhaps that makes it all the more noticeable. It jars the scenery by its singular intrusion. Whether near or far, I’m always on trash patrol. I think it’s one of our responsibilities as citizens of this much-stressed planet. If we can make our surroundings easier on the eye of someone with enough ugliness in his life, I’d like to do that.
 

Out in Colorado, we pick up what we see, and even in the frontier, we have an adopt-a-road program. Mostly we get beer and soda cans and fast-food wrappers. It may also be leftover markers and gel packets from a trail race. Whatever shouldn’t be there, we try to pick up. Sometimes I have a pack llama to carry it for me!

 

Back in the city, with trash everywhere, I developed a mandate. If I see a discarded plastic bag (and who doesn’t on a daily basis?) I take it as a sign I should fill it with trash and deposit it in a trash can.  

Everyone’s living situation is different. What would be really cool is for all of us to set up a game plan for trash remediation where we live and work. Some of the ideas I’ve heard:

• Get a group of co-workers or friends to schedule a bi-monthly trash patrol around your area for a couple hours and then end at a favorite coffee house for fun and conversation

• Sign up for an adopt-a-street program and make it a family affair or a memorial project for someone who was a great citizen. Erect a sign in their honor.

• Pick up trash as part of a service organization service project, in honor of Martin Luther King Day or for your university.

• Make that your contribution to Earth Day every year.

 

• As a manager at a business, sponsor a contest with employee teams as to which team can pick up the most trash on their lunch hour around the business with fun, edible prizes. You’ll have the added benefit of increasing the activity level of your employees.

Most of all, really care about where you live and work and help it be the best it can be.

Spring Blitz

It's getting close to spring. In St. Louis all the daffodils are out and it's the first week of March--strange. Up along side the daffodils is all the trash a city seems to sprout continuously. Time to think about cleaning up your home turf. We have something called Operation Brightside, a volunteer effort supported by the city to organize all the wards into blocks with block captains. I'm the block captain for our area and one weekend in April, we clean. The city supplies garbage bags and picks up the trash and heavy items on a certain weekend for each ward.

One year, we got our alumni association to help us clean up our neighborhood because it coincided with our university day of service. This year, we're probably on our own.

Think about where you live and see if you have such a program. If not, organize one. Get your neighbors together one morning in early spring to clean up, plant flowers, just make your neighborhood a better place to live. It doesn't take that much work, and it's a great way to teach your kids about civic mindedness and pride in neighborhood.

In Colorado, we have a similar program. The Colorado Department of Transportation enlists neighborhood associations to clean up along local highways. We go out three times a year, wearing reflective vests and toting showy garbage bags to spruce up the area. C-DOT picks up the trash bags. Within our association, we have an adopt-a-road program to keep those picked up. It would be great to sit back and complain about the trash. I'd rather pick it up and have a place to live I can be proud of. Think about it.

White Plastic Bags in Winter

White plastic grocery bags blend with the snow--to a point. But the shape give them away. Snow is flat and covers the ground with its pristine veneer, while plastic bags give themselves away by blowing in the wind, as if to remind us of their flagrant trashy nature. Even when you can't pick them up and fill them with trash, still, pick them up. They aren't snow and no one is fooled.

Trash knows no season. Neither, then, should our efforts to create a neighborhood we can be proud of.