At Carriage Lane, trash ranged from as small as a receipt from Arby’s to as big as a stack of illegally dumped tires.
Chase Ghannam and I volunteered for clean-up at the Carriage Lane site for the Rivers Alive Outreach project. This road is directly adjacent to two sets of apartments and a Greek-life house. As a result, there is bound to be a large amount of litter throughout the area, including beer bottles with varying amounts of liquid, partially eaten Lunchables packages, and filled-baby diapers. With several teams, we all spanned out across the site. Chase and I assigned ourselves to the patch of woods next to the Greek-life house, which proved to be a very challenging region to clean.
Despite initially thinking there would be a large amount of rubbish, I was very much surprised at the sheer amount of trash scattered throughout the woods. It made me extremely concerned for two major reasons. 1) If this area were not a recognized clean-up site, would the trash have ever been picked up? If not, would it have just continued to pile up without any community response? 2) How many other areas in Athens are left with this excessive amount of trash littering the environment that no one cleans up? Seeing the trash concerns me deeply that some people lack so much regard for the environment and throw out that much trash into the woods.
Despite the concern I initially felt, I now have significantly more hope. I now know that there are several organizations that are actively trying to improve the conditions of some environments that are plagued with trash. The selflessness of the people who regularly volunteer for Rivers Alive is astonishing. If more people follow the example of these amazing human beings and if efforts are expanded to more sites, so much can be accomplished in improving the environment.
I learned so much from this experience. I cannot put into words the amazement and appreciation I have for Rivers Alive. I look forward to volunteering again next year at another site, hopefully bringing along even more friends to show them what I now know to be true, that littering is not only present in our society, but it is an epidemic.
