On October 5th at 9am I attended the Rivers Alive Cleanup. I participated in the cleanup at the Derby and Branch location. I collected trash in between the road and the river and put it into a trash bag. We found many different items including tires, bottles, cans, rugs, electrical equipment, an animal skull (the picture above), and even a couch! We collected the trash for around 2 hours then we left.
It was heartbreaking to find all the trash by the road. I collected almost 100 old bottles while barely covering an area of 30 yards. Many of the bottles were buried in the dirt and appeared to have been there for many years before I found them and threw them out. Also, I found a plumbing pipe that had a tree root just growing through it. It was almost as if nature had begun to adapt to and grow around all the trash in the area. I did, however, have a glimmer of hope when I saw all the volunteers energetically helping with the cleanup.
It is very important to clean up our rivers and the trash in nature. Trees, plants and animals simply are not evolved to deal with trash and other artificial objects in the habitat. Although plants can grow around the bottles and old cans it is not ideal for their growth. Trash found in and around rivers has many unfortunate effects. This can dilute the water quality of the river which makes it uninhabitable for some aquatic animals. Also, the trash can build up and alter the natural course of the river.
At the end of the event I was proud of how much trash we can collected. However, then I recognized that this group of approximately 20 people had barely managed to do a relatively superficial clean up of this 100 yard stretch of road in two whole hours. Despite all our hard work I felt like we had barely made a dent in the bigger picture of trash in the world. Although events like Rivers Alive are nice and certainly help the rivers and surrounding area, if we want real change it will take more than an annual two hour event. Instead, people need to make an effort to first limit their littering, and second, there need to be more organized lasting efforts to clean up the existing trash. I enjoyed the event and I want to continue to make efforts to clean up the abundance of trash found in the wild.
