Happy Earth Day! Well, it's been a week since I last posted, but I've been busy during that time. My daily tallies for those 7 days were:
4/16: 149 pieces
4/17: 94 pieces
4/18: 4 pieces
4/19: 213 pieces
4/20: 3 pieces
4/21: 240 pieces
4/22: 164 pieces
Total over 7 days: 867
Not bad! I averaged over my goal of 100 pieces a day, which I very happy with.
And still, the number 1 thing I've been picking up are cigarette butts. I'm so tired of seeing them - and they are everywhere! Just the other day, I stopped at a major intersection leaving my development and right to my side was at least 30 cigarette butts scattered on the road.
But I did see one thing today that made me happy - another person picking up trash at my local library! It warmed my Earth Day-celebrating heart to see someone else out there not afraid to get their hands dirty, but the Earth cleaner! :)
Take Care,
Kara
Monday, April 22, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
The Last 4 Days
Hello, everyone! This project has been slower starting than I thought. I was hoping to get out early Saturday morning before the kids & husband got up and go some place that I knew really needed cleaning up and put a great big dent into my goal. But sleep, the temptress she is, kept me in bed late. In fact, my son and husband woke me up with a conversation that they were having downstairs. Oh well, I'm going to shoot for going out early this Saturday morning. There are a couple of roadsides that are pretty nasty around here - where I wouldn't want to go with kids in tow. So an early Saturday morning would be perfect for those types of locations.
I did do some trash collection over the past few days - 209 pieces to be exact. My husband and I had a bunch of personal business to take care of over this past weekend that took up a bunch of time, so I just wasn't able to do much. My goal for days where I'm not trying to do a serious cleanup is to pick up 100 pieces. The thought with that is if I averaged picking up 100 pieces a day, I would complete this project in about 3 years. II would obviously like to finish sooner, but if I can't, 100 pieces a day is reasonable for me to do, given that I have 2 kids and dinner to cook. :)
Today I was able to pick up over 100 pieces of trash. If you go to any public area - parks, schools, libraries, shopping centers, sports fields, etc. - it will probably take you 10 minutes to pick up 100 pieces of trash. And the pieces range in size - most are small, but every once in a while, you find a shoe or coat or water bottle. Of the over 400 pieces I've collected so far, very few of those pieces have been recyclable items.
The trash typically falls into 2 categories: wrappers from convenience foods and cigarette butts. I can't tell you how sick I am of seeing cigarette butts. While I image many of the wrappers get left behind by busy moms trying to feed their kids on the go while fitting in time at the park, there is no way the cigarette butts accidentally fell on the ground. Someone dropped them there on purpose. It is an unhealthy habit that is wreaking havoc on our world in more ways than one.
Well, I'm hoping to pick up the pace tomorrow & pick up a couple hundred pieces while out doing my weekly shopping with my son. Target's parking lot is always a mess, so it will unfortunately be easy to get a couple of hundred pieces there without much work. :(
Take Care,
Kara
I did do some trash collection over the past few days - 209 pieces to be exact. My husband and I had a bunch of personal business to take care of over this past weekend that took up a bunch of time, so I just wasn't able to do much. My goal for days where I'm not trying to do a serious cleanup is to pick up 100 pieces. The thought with that is if I averaged picking up 100 pieces a day, I would complete this project in about 3 years. II would obviously like to finish sooner, but if I can't, 100 pieces a day is reasonable for me to do, given that I have 2 kids and dinner to cook. :)
Today I was able to pick up over 100 pieces of trash. If you go to any public area - parks, schools, libraries, shopping centers, sports fields, etc. - it will probably take you 10 minutes to pick up 100 pieces of trash. And the pieces range in size - most are small, but every once in a while, you find a shoe or coat or water bottle. Of the over 400 pieces I've collected so far, very few of those pieces have been recyclable items.
The trash typically falls into 2 categories: wrappers from convenience foods and cigarette butts. I can't tell you how sick I am of seeing cigarette butts. While I image many of the wrappers get left behind by busy moms trying to feed their kids on the go while fitting in time at the park, there is no way the cigarette butts accidentally fell on the ground. Someone dropped them there on purpose. It is an unhealthy habit that is wreaking havoc on our world in more ways than one.
Well, I'm hoping to pick up the pace tomorrow & pick up a couple hundred pieces while out doing my weekly shopping with my son. Target's parking lot is always a mess, so it will unfortunately be easy to get a couple of hundred pieces there without much work. :(
Take Care,
Kara
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Tally from first 2 days
Hello again! I actually started this project yesterday, picking up a few pieces of trash around my daughter's school and out running errands. In just a couple of minutes, I was able to pick up 23 pieces. Humble, but not a bad start.
Today, I got more serious. I picked up 180 pieces today. A few were at my son's preschool & again at my daughter's school, but a majority were at our area library - around 130 pieces. Every time I go to the library, I always notice a ton of trash around it. In fact, one time we had a Girl Scout meeting at this library and after the meeting, we had the girls go outside to pick up trash around the building. We were able, between the 10 girls and 5 parents, to pick up over 1000 pieces of trash in about 20 minutes. And I'm not just talking candy wrappers - we found newspapers still in their plastic bags, baseball bat, shoes, hats, etc. We were all appalled at the stuff we found, but the girls felt great at being able to make a big difference. That's the great thing about picking up trash - even my 4 year old son can (and does) help out!
So, as of the end of today, I've collected 203 pieces! I'm going to take my son to the park tomorrow - always tons of wrappers and band aids there. Will report what I find!
Take Care,
Kara
Today, I got more serious. I picked up 180 pieces today. A few were at my son's preschool & again at my daughter's school, but a majority were at our area library - around 130 pieces. Every time I go to the library, I always notice a ton of trash around it. In fact, one time we had a Girl Scout meeting at this library and after the meeting, we had the girls go outside to pick up trash around the building. We were able, between the 10 girls and 5 parents, to pick up over 1000 pieces of trash in about 20 minutes. And I'm not just talking candy wrappers - we found newspapers still in their plastic bags, baseball bat, shoes, hats, etc. We were all appalled at the stuff we found, but the girls felt great at being able to make a big difference. That's the great thing about picking up trash - even my 4 year old son can (and does) help out!
So, as of the end of today, I've collected 203 pieces! I'm going to take my son to the park tomorrow - always tons of wrappers and band aids there. Will report what I find!
Take Care,
Kara
Hello!
Hello! For a while now, I've been thinking about starting some big environmental project - something simple, but with a potentially big impact. Just this weekend, I decided on my project: I am personally going to pick up 100,000 pieces of trash.
The reason I decided to go with this project was based on a badge that my Girl Scout troop worked on last school year. In case you didn't know, the Girl Scouts celebrated their 100th birthday last year. In honor of this occasion, our GS council (GSCNC) created a 100th birthday patch, which our troop worked on. The patch had 100 different activities to choose from - 10 in each of 10 different categories - and the girls had to perform one activity from each category. One of the categories was the environment and the activity that we chose to do was for each girl to pick up 100 pieces of trash. So, after a couple of meetings, we took the girls outside for 10 minutes and helped them find trash outside of our meeting space. My co-leader and I would help the girls find pieces of trash so they could complete this task.
And what I found after helping the girls for two weeks is that I now see trash - big & small - wherever I go. It is like a lot of things - once you see the problem, you cannot unsee it. And I've noticed that in our area, it is getting worse.
I live in what is currently the richest county in the USA - Loudoun County - in Northern VA. In my general area, we are a sea of HOAs, with tightly controlled maintenance requirements and highly manicured common areas. Heck, there's even one community which has spray painted the grass in their road medians green when it gets burnt out over the summer! And it is very rare to see an old/beater car on the road - Jags, BMWs, Lexuses definitely; old 1992 Honda CRX no way. Image is very big around here, as you can imagine. But even in this image-conscious area, there is tons of trash along the sides of the road, in the grass at our school, in the parking lots at our shopping centers. And it is driving me crazy!
My hope would be to inspire others to pick up 5 pieces of trash every day while they are out running errands or walking the dog. Anything to help keep this trash from reaching our waterways and, ultimately, the ocean. In this blog, I will be tracking my progress and posting pictures of some of the worst offenses that I see. I hope you will join me in picking up trash in your area!
Take Care,
Kara
The reason I decided to go with this project was based on a badge that my Girl Scout troop worked on last school year. In case you didn't know, the Girl Scouts celebrated their 100th birthday last year. In honor of this occasion, our GS council (GSCNC) created a 100th birthday patch, which our troop worked on. The patch had 100 different activities to choose from - 10 in each of 10 different categories - and the girls had to perform one activity from each category. One of the categories was the environment and the activity that we chose to do was for each girl to pick up 100 pieces of trash. So, after a couple of meetings, we took the girls outside for 10 minutes and helped them find trash outside of our meeting space. My co-leader and I would help the girls find pieces of trash so they could complete this task.
And what I found after helping the girls for two weeks is that I now see trash - big & small - wherever I go. It is like a lot of things - once you see the problem, you cannot unsee it. And I've noticed that in our area, it is getting worse.
I live in what is currently the richest county in the USA - Loudoun County - in Northern VA. In my general area, we are a sea of HOAs, with tightly controlled maintenance requirements and highly manicured common areas. Heck, there's even one community which has spray painted the grass in their road medians green when it gets burnt out over the summer! And it is very rare to see an old/beater car on the road - Jags, BMWs, Lexuses definitely; old 1992 Honda CRX no way. Image is very big around here, as you can imagine. But even in this image-conscious area, there is tons of trash along the sides of the road, in the grass at our school, in the parking lots at our shopping centers. And it is driving me crazy!
My hope would be to inspire others to pick up 5 pieces of trash every day while they are out running errands or walking the dog. Anything to help keep this trash from reaching our waterways and, ultimately, the ocean. In this blog, I will be tracking my progress and posting pictures of some of the worst offenses that I see. I hope you will join me in picking up trash in your area!
Take Care,
Kara
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