I attended the Rivers Alive waterway cleanup on 10/5 from 9 am until 11:30 am, and worked all morning at the Derby and Branch site removing trash from the creek and bagging it so that it could be disposed of. There were all kinds of things left there including a giant rug, two animal skulls, and a crossbow bolt, but bottles seemed to be the most common.
I was shocked by how much trash there was, I had no idea that people threw that much into waterways. It didn’t look too bad from the road, but once we got into the woods and the creek there were hundreds of pieces of trash scattered everywhere. Some of the stuff had obviously been there a long time, but other pieces of trash were relatively new. This proves that this is an ongoing problem that started many years ago. Luckily, we had a lot of people working with us, and we were able to get the majority of the trash cleaned up and taken care of.
Keeping our waterways clean and trash free should be a relatively easy task, it doesn’t take much effort at all to hold on to a piece of trash and place it in the proper receptacle rather than chuck it into a stream. Also, if people just picked up trash that they found instead of ignoring it, the problem wouldn’t reach the scale that it is at today. Otherwise you end up with a huge buildup of trash and waste products which profoundly affect the environment. Plants and animals are harmed by litter and water quality can suffer as a result of unsafe trash.
I felt like we accomplished a lot at the event, but that if we don’t come back frequently the problem will just reappear. I think an important step to take in order to address this problem is to increase awareness and try to educate people on the harm that they do when they throw trash into a waterway. I am willing to continue to work to pick up trash that others leave behind, but I think that it would be a lot more efficient if I instead helped show them why it isn’t ok for them to litter.