Litter Cleanups Great Winter Outdoors Activity
Taking part in a community cleanup is a great way to spend time outdoors during winter, while meeting new people who share your dedication to living litter free. Organized cleanups are usually easy to find, but if you can’t find any planned cleanups in your area, then take it upon yourself to organize a cleanup. Maybe that’s you and one friend, or maybe it’s dozens of people. Either way, the rewards of a cleaner environment and personal fulfillment are priceless.
Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of cleaning up America may not have had anything to do with literally picking up trash, but I feel Dr. King would have been proud of the dozens of citizens who banned together in the small riverside community of Rocheport to pick up litter on the day set aside each year to honor his memory and his vision of a better world. I was proud to take part with my family, and relished the opportunity to provide my young daughters with hands on experience about the importance of service for the betterment of others.
Armed with empty mesh trash bags, my wife, daughters and I stomped off into the wilds of Davisdale Conservation Area along the Missouri River. It didn’t take long to begin finding trash along the levee. Every few feet, we’d spot another plastic bottle or empty can. My young daughters established a competition with each other as they strained their eyes for the next piece of litter. Once spotted, they’d race to pick it up. What they never realized was that no matter which of them picked up the piece of litter, their mother and I were the real winners. We joyfully watched as our daughters learned a lesson on value of service.
Spending the day as a family cleaning up litter is a great bonding experience while benefiting your community.
As we made our way along the river, we picked up hundreds of plastic bottles and other shards of trash, many of which will now be recycled. We found a tire and a large fuel tank that must have come off a tractor decades ago. One dried out slough we came upon was so full of trash that it honestly looked like part of a garbage dump. When the river was up earlier in the year, the slough must have been an eddy. After the water receded, loads and loads of trash was caught in the timber.
We filled our bags to capacity, but then had to turn back and return to the cleanup headquarters over a mile away. I had a bag over both shoulders, and the girls were dragging theirs, because they were too heavy for them to carry. We passed so much trash that just wouldn’t fit into our already bulging bags. All we could do was direct others to the spot we discovered with the hope that collectively our efforts would remove all the litter.
The whole idea of a community cleanup is to function as a community. For this specific event, there was a 9 a.m. kickoff with cinnamon rolls and coffee followed by a potluck lunch at noon at the local general store. A few local restaurants prepared and donated the food. The benefit to their business was simply being a part of creating a cleaner community in which to live and work.
Seeing all the folks who left the kickoff in clean clothes return covered in mud, laughing and full of joy was a reward all its own. Day in and day out we hear about all the ills and evils of the world we live in, yet good still exists around every corner. On this day, it was evident in the smiling faces of children cleaning up trash on a riverbank.
See you down the trail…
Brandon Butler
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CFM Magazine
