With that in mind, April is being dedicated to 4 volunteer projects! YAY!!! One for each month I have missed!
And it started this weekend with Project Stream Clean. Basically, the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay puts on an event every year with numerous clean up sites along Chesapeake Bay tributaries.
So at 9 am I went out and joined a crew working in a stream along one of our highways. I wasn't sure what to expect, maybe a few bottles and plastic bags here and there, but I know I wasn't expecting this:
The second thought in my head was, "How could people do this?" Who thought that this was Ok? Obviously they knew it wasn't Ok, but where was their sense of responsibility? Stewardship? Much of what we had found had been there for a long time, but there was trash that was pretty recent too. Like the license plate from 2002. After helping to dig through the heap of tires, I helped pick up bottles and cans that could be recycled. Once we started doing that, we realized we were going to need a bag for trash as well. We found ice skates, Christmas tree stands, christmas lights, mugs, hats, gloves, lamps, dolls, fertilizer can sprayers, tarp, CD's, tapes... the list goes on and on. There were even bags filled with cans for that were meant for recycling. It was never ending too. Layer after layer of trash. A few times I stood up and just wanted to throw in the towel because the trash just seemed to reappear.
I doubt everyone will read this blog and suddenly feel compelled to do anything to change what is in these pictures, I am not that optimistic. But I do have hope that maybe a few might suddenly get the urge to go out and do an event like this. I didn't know anyone I was working with, but I made new friends. I got in a great workout with squatting down, and pulling and carrying heavy objects. I got a free lunch from Whole Foods. I did something positive for the environment.