Ten years ago I had the opportunity to live in a place where you had to search to find trash on the ground. In fact if someone saw something even the size of a candy wrapper fall out out of your pocket, they would tell you about it, you would pick it up and carry on about your business. Why is that not the standard? Why is a cigarette butt not considered trash?
I liked the picture to the left for one main reason. He is not cleaning up as part of a big group on the side of a highway. Big group trash cleanup projects are wonderful ideas but I like to think of clean up as more of a continuous idea. If everybody did a little bit, a little more often, we might enjoy our surroundings A LOT more.
Every day, every one who reads this drives or walks by trash and does not pick it up. I'd be willing to bet that most of us could walk within a quarter mile from our houses and find a decent amount of trash. It wouldn't take long. You don't have to pick it all up. If we all pick up a little bit every week it would make a huge difference. So I've set my weekly amount as 15 gallons per week. I have a lot of 5 gallon buckets so it will make it easy to measure. I'll just fill up three per week. I have a feeling its going to be quite easy and my guess is that it won't take much more than 30 minutes to an hour per week. Here's to cleaning up this beautiful planet we live on for not only ourselves but for the other animals and organisms we share it with!
I liked the picture to the left for one main reason. He is not cleaning up as part of a big group on the side of a highway. Big group trash cleanup projects are wonderful ideas but I like to think of clean up as more of a continuous idea. If everybody did a little bit, a little more often, we might enjoy our surroundings A LOT more.
Every day, every one who reads this drives or walks by trash and does not pick it up. I'd be willing to bet that most of us could walk within a quarter mile from our houses and find a decent amount of trash. It wouldn't take long. You don't have to pick it all up. If we all pick up a little bit every week it would make a huge difference. So I've set my weekly amount as 15 gallons per week. I have a lot of 5 gallon buckets so it will make it easy to measure. I'll just fill up three per week. I have a feeling its going to be quite easy and my guess is that it won't take much more than 30 minutes to an hour per week. Here's to cleaning up this beautiful planet we live on for not only ourselves but for the other animals and organisms we share it with!
End of Week 14 Update
Right up there along side of going to the farmers market once a week, this has been one of the most fun goals so far. During this first week of cleaning up 15 gallons of trash I did not even have to go a quarter mile in one direction from our house to collect all the trash pictured to the right. Its scary to think about what might be in a quarter mile radius.
Week 14 happened to fall in line perfectly with Virginia Tech's BIG EVENT, an initiative that happens once a year to get college kids out helping and cleaning up the community. Other than driving by the areas I had cleaned up later in the week and seeing a clean landscape the most rewarding part of the effort was when our neighbor stopped her car and thanked me for my time and effort.
There are a few things I've learned about picking up trash.
1) Property lines are a gold mine. Just find that little piece of land that seems to have a little sign sticking out of it saying "I'm not sure who I belong to, the guy on the right or the guy on the left" and your going to find trash. Why? Probably because guy left and guy right both feel like its not theirs.
2) Always turn around and head back to your house/car before you fill up your buckets/bag. You are going to find more on the way back.
3) Gloves and long pants are a good thing, you might end up stompin' some briars and picking up broken glass.
4) Keep one bucket/bag separate for the recycling so you don't have to sort it out when you get back. 70% of the trash I found was recyclable.
Come join me next week!
End of Week 14 Totals
Soda - 0 ounces
Water - 49.06 Gallons
Liquor - 0 shots
Tea - 154 cups
Trips to unhappy places - Jimmy Johns (1)
$ to support neighbors = $201.69
Fried food consumption - 2 dorito chips
Breakfasts eaten - 49
Pushups - 800 Crunches - 720
Days Flossed - 35
Coffee - 0 cups
Sunrises attended - 3
Beers drunk - 0
Gallons of Trash Collected - 15
Right up there along side of going to the farmers market once a week, this has been one of the most fun goals so far. During this first week of cleaning up 15 gallons of trash I did not even have to go a quarter mile in one direction from our house to collect all the trash pictured to the right. Its scary to think about what might be in a quarter mile radius.
Week 14 happened to fall in line perfectly with Virginia Tech's BIG EVENT, an initiative that happens once a year to get college kids out helping and cleaning up the community. Other than driving by the areas I had cleaned up later in the week and seeing a clean landscape the most rewarding part of the effort was when our neighbor stopped her car and thanked me for my time and effort.
There are a few things I've learned about picking up trash.
1) Property lines are a gold mine. Just find that little piece of land that seems to have a little sign sticking out of it saying "I'm not sure who I belong to, the guy on the right or the guy on the left" and your going to find trash. Why? Probably because guy left and guy right both feel like its not theirs.
2) Always turn around and head back to your house/car before you fill up your buckets/bag. You are going to find more on the way back.
3) Gloves and long pants are a good thing, you might end up stompin' some briars and picking up broken glass.
4) Keep one bucket/bag separate for the recycling so you don't have to sort it out when you get back. 70% of the trash I found was recyclable.
Come join me next week!
End of Week 14 Totals
Soda - 0 ounces
Water - 49.06 Gallons
Liquor - 0 shots
Tea - 154 cups
Trips to unhappy places - Jimmy Johns (1)
$ to support neighbors = $201.69
Fried food consumption - 2 dorito chips
Breakfasts eaten - 49
Pushups - 800 Crunches - 720
Days Flossed - 35
Coffee - 0 cups
Sunrises attended - 3
Beers drunk - 0
Gallons of Trash Collected - 15