Pick-Up Trash

Hey Everyone, this is my 2nd blog entry and today I chose to write about the need to pick-up trash for a specific reason.   I'm sure as you walk around outside in your neighborhood and your surrounding communities you notice other peoples trash on your property, road side, and parks.  It's a problem that seems so simple to stop, yet every time someone cleans up a park someone else leaves behind a mess.  When I was younger their was an elderly woman that lived a couple houses down the street from me, every Earth Day she would recruit me and a couple of my friends to grab a trash bag and go down to the park at the end of our street to clean up the garbage people left behind.   The park has many trash bins that are spread out evenly, but the trash never seems to make it into the bin.  Every year, year after year we would clean up the park every Earth Day hoping maybe one Earth Day the park would be clean, that people would be responsible enough to clean up after themselves.

Recently I was riding in our van and we were driving down a side street and I noticed a few men wearing reflective vests carrying garbage bags with a truck following them close behind.  As we got closer I realized that they were from the Public Works Department, but I became confused because it was not garbage pick-up day and their wasn't a garbage truck around.  I then realized these men we city employees earning an honest living picking up trash because we as a society aren't civilized enough to pick up after ourselves.  Our tax dollars are being used to clean up our city streets because we can't seem to do it ourselves.  Money that could be used for more important things like education, renewable energy, fighting hunger, assisting the homeless and much more.

So what if you didn't drop the cup blowing down the street, simply pick it up and toss it in a trash bin.

The point I'm trying to get across is that we can not fight the climate crisis our planet is facing if we are unable to keep our communities clean.  How are we going to reverse the big issues if we can't keep our neighborhoods free of trash.  My next challenge for everyone is to keep a grocery bag with you in your car or on your next walk or bike ride.  This way when your out and about you will always have a place to put your trash and if you happen to find someone else's, pick theirs up too.  Everyone says "It doesn't make a difference if one person picks up trash", but even if just one person picks up one piece of trash a day, it's a step in a positive direction.  Make yourself a New Year's resolution to pick up trash left in your neighborhood and set yourself a goal to collect a certain amount of bags each month.