Monroe County Pick Up The Parks

Bonnie's daughter picking up our first recyclable

Saturday morning was Monroe County's sixth annual Pick Up The Parks day, and luckily, it was a clear, but chilly day, following two days of snow showers... As part of Sunday Assembly's community outreach, a group of us – eight adults and a half dozen kids – volunteered to help out in Highland Park, and were assigned a lovely area by School No. 12. I was disappointed that there wasn't that much detritus, but we did still manage to fill a couple of large black bags with garbage (mostly bits of paper and wrappers and plastic bags, but my friend Bonnie and I also retrieved a soggy sleeping bag and pillow, from deep in the woods), and smaller white bags with recyclables (lots of plastic water bottles, shards of glass, and aluminum beer cans). The only thing I couldn't bring myself to pick up was a rubber glove stuck on a bush. It was pretty easy to spot the trash – pretty much anything shiny was man-made and didn't belong. But we were occasionally fooled by decaying leaves that resembled paper and bits of birch that looked like styrofoam.

Wegmans bag stamped
"Return to Sender"

Maybe because there wasn't that much to pick up, the kids mostly played, enjoying the sunshine and rolling down the hills. Bonnie and I couldn't help wondering why some people think that the great outdoors is just a big rubbish bin. And I couldn't help wondering when our state or supermarket chains will bow to the inevitable and ban or tax the single-use plastic bag. Wegmans got some press at the beginning of the month about an April program to give the local Nature Conservancy a donation based some complicated calculation of reduced single bag usage. However, after making three visits to three different Wegmans stores in the first two weeks of this month, it was clear to me that they weren't really committed to it. None of the checkout clerks I talked to had heard about it, so they were still doling out the carrier bags as if they were going out of style. And only the third manager I spoke with, mid-month, had some familiarity with it – he had some signage – in a back office...

It's shocking how much plastic ends up in our environment and is mistaken for food by animals (to learn more, check out the documentary Bag It). Reusing and recycling are fine, but the best approach is reducing – not creating so much plastic garbage in the first place. And it's disappointing how many people don't respect the environment, or understand the implications of littering. So I guess there's no chance we'll stop needing annual Pick Up The Park events anytime soon.