Recently, I misplaced my bike, so I was walking everywhere. It's amazing how walking slows life down, and makes us notice the details. Unfortunately, a detail I've noticed is that every time I leave my house or the bus, I immediately find a plastic bag on the ground. Within the next block, I have that bag filled with other garbage from peoples' yards. Even on my bike, I stop along my way and pick up garbage to deposit in the next can I pass.
I walked from work to the co-op on Monday, and was dismayed to see a disgusting sea of trash on the river bank under the 3rd street bridge in Corvallis. Plastic bags were everywhere in the grass. We wonder how bags and plastics get into our oceans? Well, look at the picture on this blog and wonder no more. So, yesterday, I snagged a colleague to protect me from the drunk guys in the park and went down there to clean it up. Once we got there, the source was pretty clear. In the darkness above my head in the photo are a bunch of people huddled under the bridge. Great, that means there are greater social implications to the garbage problem, not just people being careless. Don't get me started on that.
So, what are we going to do about it? Start a fun community project! Yeehaw! All you do is take yourself, your family, a scout troop, a school class and clean up some garbage. Look on http://www.europe-camping-guide.com/get-longitude-latitude-google-maps/. Zoom over to your town and into the spot where you picked up the garbage, get the latitude and longitude of exactly where you were, and send them to me. Tell me the date you did it, who did it, and how many pieces of garbage you picked up (wendybrddance@yahoo.com). I will add it to my map online (http://app.databasin.org/app/pages/mapPage.jsp?id=acb9c4f5937e4e829d7578624374e5d5), and we can track where people are picking up garbage in the community. You can even send a picture to be posted as an attachment to the map and give us a visual of the garbage and/or your group doing something great for the environment. Remember to be safe. Wear gloves, if you're a germa-phobe, but let's get out there and clean some things up!
