Oh Yeah, it’s Earth Month!

April 22nd was Earth Day. Maybe you didn’t know that, but don’t feel bad, I didn’t know about Earth Day until a few years ago. Oops! 

Did you participate in any Earth Day events? Did you know that every year, roughly 1 billion people participate in a related event? How amazing. Let’s try to make it more! If we get 2 billion next year, imagine how much we could accomplish.

Hang on, I’m getting side tracked. Back to my original topic; picking up trash in our neighborhood.

This is our cleanup story where I’ll share how it went and why doing this only once a year (even with 1 billion people) is not be enough to clean up our planet. Hang out until the end to learn how you can plan or improvise a cleanup event in just a few easy steps. 

Our Neighborhood Trash Cleanup

This year, 2023, marks the third Earth Day since The Real Global Garbage began, and the first year that we had an official event. This was not an event I could publicize, as it was for my community only. However, fliers were printed, distributed, and the event was set to happen. 

On the day of the event, I was so excited to see a few volunteers show up, I knew they were the ones who really wanted to be there. Perhaps more individuals wanted to be there but couldn’t, but to be truthful, I was not sure if anyone would show up at all. Last year in late spring, I hosted a cleanup event and no one showed up until the very end. I later discovered that it was likely due to it being on a Saturday and most people wanted to sleep in. I don’t blame them, that idea sounded great! 

Now here we were, four of us, eager to get started. We didn’t know it but we were in for a few surprises!

We started our trash picking at the pond. Why? Because it is a high-density area, meaning that of the whole neighborhood, the pond had the most trash. There is a playground and dumpster very close to the pond, so litter and trash get carried away by the wind, children leave their snack wrapper and lollipop sticks wherever it drops, and it quickly finds it’s way into the water. And if you didn’t know, once it’s in the water, it’s much harder to pick it out. If you want to learn more about that, here is a recent post about what happens to trash when it enters the water-ways. 

Finding Trash and Treasure

It’s always a mystery picking up trash, you never know what you will pick up next. It could be cigarettes, or maybe even money! That’s always fun. We were surprised at what we found. The youngest volunteer found a toy boat in the water. She scooped it out with the net, told me that her brothers had made this boat a while back and lost it. She was so excited to bring it back to them, and with a laugh she said, “I’ll tell them what they missed out on”. What a story to bring home, right? 

She also found giant snail shells, clam shells, we found 3 baseballs, several doggy poop bags (with and without poop), and countless plastic film bags, food/snack packaging, a 5 gallon bucket, a hanging planter, bottle lids, soda cans, plastic bottles, and the list goes on and on. 

The most surprising thing that I found was at the very end or the event. As we walked up to the dumpsters to empty our bags and buckets, I was so shocked to see a stationary bike! I later looked it up online and found that it is worth over $300, and in almost perfect condition. I later discovered another fitness machine, with absolutely nothing wrong with it. What a surprise! Needless to say, I have been enjoying my new home-gym. But that still wasn’t the best of the treasure.

The best part was the people. They were willing and excited about spending part of their weekend caring for our community, and it was freezing cold and wet! They were thankful to have the opportunity, and expressed they wanted to do it more. Well, I think that can be arranged!

Why One Day a Year Is Not Enough

According to EarthDay.org, about 1 billion people “mobilize for action every Earth Day”. Even though that is a huge number of people, we still have the daily problems of garbage mismanagement, creating more waste than we can handle, and constant littering, to name a few. The average person creating roughly 4.5 pounds of trash per day, which equals 1,642.5 pounds a year (per person), and roughly half of that ends up in landfills so we still have the other 50% somewhere. Plainly put, one day out of the year will never be enough to clean up our planet.

I’m still in favor of this event, because Earth Day is a great platform for inspiration, learning, and empowering individuals and groups to start thinking about how our role as humans relates to the balance of our planet. Earth Day is a great tool for awareness as well, it’s necessary for humanities longevity and success on our planet, and as cheesy as it sounds, we need our planet to be healthy. 

 

To Wrap It Up

The cleanup event was a success! And after seeing how simple it was, and how genuinely interested the volunteers were, I will be doing this again in other neighborhoods, too. 

To those few who came, thank you so much for being great examples to those around us, and for caring for our neighborhood. It was not possible without you. And to everyone who participated in any Earth Day event around the globe, thank you so much. It’s so important that we as the human race take care of our planet, not just for our betterment, but for the rest of the world, the thousands of ecosystems, and the animals. We need this Earth to be healthy and well so that we can continue living good, happy, lives, and so our children and the following generations can do the same. 

If you want to host a cleanup event, or just want to grab a few friends and go pick up trash, you can check out this post I wrote on how to host a cleanup event. Do not worry, it’s not complicated, and it’s so rewarding to see a pond go from dirty, trashy, and sickly, to clear of trash and back to the natural way that ponds are meant to be. Not only does it look better, but the creatures and water will be much better because of your work.

 

How did you spend your Earth Day? Let me know in the comments below, and thank you so much for reading!

Until next time,

Hosanna