Combating Trash is Location Sensitive

Picking up trash can be fascinating, seriously! I have the blessing of living in two different places, one way up in the mountains with very little trash, and one in the heart of a major city with beaucoup trash so plentiful it seems to come up out the ground instead of grass. So I have different approaches to my dedication for keeping my world cleaner.




In Colorado, I have a friend who is always training pack llamas, so when we do our adopt-a-road trash pickup, we take a llama along with saddlebags to hold the trash. Then we climb down and up ditches, picking up what tourists flying by have decided to jettison. They don’t live here; why should they care?



Rattling the saddlebags and stuffing trash gradually gets the llamas used to packing and we don’t have to carry all of it. Win-win. Plus, with a llama, people always slow down to look and sometimes notice we are picking up trash, which gets them to thinking about not leaving any!



My city home has a real dearth of pack animals, so I have my own mantra for that: if I see a discarded plastic bag (and who doesn’t daily in the city?) I was meant to pick it up and fill it with trash before depositing it in a proper receptacle. That basically means, every time I leave my house, I will be picking up trash, but that has a finite limit, as does the bag. Then I can continue on my way, enjoying the walk, the day and any flowers.



Imagine my surprise the other day while sauntering down a dirt road gawking at the new snow covering on the mountains, when an empty plastic bag drifted in front of me. Here? Okay, same pledge holds, so I picked it up and started filling. Because of our paucity of trash, I walked a lot farther toting it before it was full. And my surroundings were once more pristine.



Can I invite you readers to do the same? Minus the llama, in most cases, I know, but be aware and help out our planet a little.

Growth Makes Us Uncomfortable

It's supposed to. Anything worth doing usually involves some internal policing and stress. That's how we continue to mesh with our world in a meaningful way. For most of the year, I live in the city, a very diverse area the continues to expand my perspective. One block one way is old historical mansions. One block another way is boarded up tenements. They are all part of my milieu. One thing they have in common, at least along the sidewalks and streets is trash. And trash isn't something we venture forth every day to look for.

I used to pick it up everywhere I went, but I never got to enjoy a walk. So I came up with a solution I could live with. Since I'm the Plastic Bag Lady, I am using plastic bags as my trigger. Whenever I see an empty plastic disposable bag blowing around, I take it as a sign that I'm supposed to pick it up, fill it with trash and dispose of it. That limits my trash forays but not much! Do you know how many trash bags there are in the city? Especially a city that doesn't ban them? At least once a trip, and I walk every day, my mandate kicks in.

Sometimes, when I'm preoccupied or feeling tired or whatever, I walk by one. I usually get ten feet away before I come back and pick it up to fill. No problem doing that and when I come back home, it looks better--for at least a while. I sleep better knowing I'm doing things to help my world and make someone else's trip to the bus stop or store a little more pleasant.

Spring and Sprouting Trash

It's spring. Flowers are blooming, and unfortunately, so is trash. More people out walking and apparently littering. If your town doesn't have a clean-up day, organize one for your neighborhood. Send out a flyer or an email inviting everyone to meet at your place for coffee, bagels and donuts (People will do anything for free Krispy Kreems) and grab a trash bag to go out and spruce up the area. In St. Louis City, we have Operation Brightside each May and I volunteered to be a block captain one year. Apparently, that is an appointment for life unless you tell them otherwise. Hey! It's once a year. I can do this.

You can also combine trash pick-up with a potluck to follow, anything that makes your environment neater and helps build community with your neighbors.

Some Things We Old People Can Do to Make Our World Better

This was written over Christmas but has applicability all year long. We have a lot on our minds right now: the economy, terrorism, pat-downs, family, the holidays. Let's not forget about our planet, the one we have to live on and share with others? I was walking through our city neighborhood the other evening, looking at Christmas lights--and trash. A plastic bag blew up around my legs, and I thought it did nothing to enhance the decor. So I picked it up, along with some fast-food containers, and a notice of power shut-off for non-payment, wondering how that anonymous person was doing. I know a lot of people that walk my street are struggling, so what are some things I can do to help that?



Of course, we can identify and give as generously as possible to charities we care about. There are little things we can do, too, to perk up the holidays for people less fortunate that us:


• Pick up the trash: I have this formula that if I find a plastic bag on the street or sidewalk, it is a sign that I'm supposed to pick it up and fill it with as much trash as it will hold. I do this at least weekly. I'm walking somewhere anyway, so why not fill a bag with trash and deposit it in a receptacle? If we all did that, the world might look a little spiffier and worth our efforts.


• Put spare change in the "Feed the Meter" parking meters. We have several of these on corners in the Central West End of St. Louis and all the money fed into the meters goes directly to homeless services. So instead of giving a panhandler money, feed the meter. Then you know where it goes.


• Never pass a Salvation Army bucket without giving them something. I carry quarters and dollar bills in my pocket during the holidays so I'm ready to feed them. It really encourages those frigid bell-ringers.


What are some of the little things you do to make your corner of the world a little better for people? Please share, and sign up to be a follower of this blog. God Bless, and Happy Holidays!

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.