Give a Hoot!

Earth Day is drawing near, and local area activists are already preparing. One recent activity was the 20th Annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup, organized by the Alice Ferguson Foundation. I spotted a lot of clean-up activity while doing my Saturday bike ride along the Rock Creek up Beach Drive into Maryland. A colleague forwarded to me a press release that was sent out after the clean-up effort. It included a listing of the more interesting items collected:

a prosthetic leg, surfboard, ten bags of dog poop, lacy black bra and underwear, a backpack with clothes and a wallet, real estate sign, traffic cones, pink sleeping bag, boat parts, mattress and box spring for a double bed, grocery cart, metal barrels, sections of plastic pipe and rubber hose, three auto seats, Christmas ornament, five artificial Christmas trees, vacuum cleaner head, port-a-potty, one intact light bulb, two fuel tanks, and many items of construction debris.

My first reaction to this list was to laugh. A prosthetic leg? Those, sadly, always inspire laughter regardless of the situation. But then I realized, "WTF, these people don't have trash cans?" I'm such an avid anti-litter freak that I use my back left pocket as a tiny trash can, where I stash receipts, gum wrappers and other small bits of trash I generate during the day. I'm also known for picking up plastic shopping bags (which should be banned) that I find blowing down the street before they get caught in trees. I have such a hard time believing that people can be so thoughtless.

So, please, for all our sake, recycle what you can and properly dispose of the rest. We only have one planet. Let's not trash it.