It's time to become full-time neighborhood environmentalists

The sides of our roads look especially littered with trash at this time of year, now that the snow has melted, and before grass has begun to thicken and shrubs returned to full foliage. Our spring bloom of refuse became even more apparent to me recently when I was driving in the car with my four-year-old son, and after an unusually long silence he remarked, as a matter of fact, “Mommy, there is a lot of garbage on the side of the road.” I had been thinking the same thing. Litter was simply everywhere. After another long pause my son, using impeccable pre-school logic, said, “Those people must not have garbage pails.” While I highly doubt that this is the case, I proceeded to calmly explain to my son how the garbage ends up on the side of the road. What I lacked, however, was justification for the existence of so much litter. With environmental issues and the nascent green economy at the forefront of public awareness, along with much talk about global warming and energy issues (costs, conservation, alternatives), the abundant amounts of garbage littering our communities barely gets a mention in this important conversation. Maybe it’s time for us to consider becoming full-time neighborhood environmentalists. Without discounting the importance of protecting the earth’s resources and pursuing sustainable living goals, concentrating some of our efforts on the environment directly surrounding us, I feel, is crucial to the well-being of our communities. My experiences, in fact, as an environmentalist have shown that people recognize that the most practical and gratifying place to start cleaning up the earth is in their own backyard, so to speak, and around the neighborhood in which they live. Local watershed groups throughout the Hudson Valley have already taken neighborhood environmentalism to heart. People are coming together to promote better stewardship of the land that feeds into our streams and rivers. Also, these groups offer perfect opportunities for concerned residents to lend their hands to community cleanups. Last summer five Poughkeepsie high school students joined a group of other volunteers and participated in a local creek cleanup that was part of Creek Week, an event co-sponsored by Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and the Fall Kill Watershed Committee. Trash was cleaned out from the Fall Kill, and every found piece of garbage and dumped item was counted and identified, from bikes and road signs to cigarette butts and candy wrappers. What resulted was a comprehensive look at what exactly was littering the creek through different sections of the city. This remarkable example of neighborhood environmentalism is resulting in another cleanup of the Fall Kill on April 25, and this time the focus will be on collecting glass along with the usual refuse. Interestingly, the cleanup identified that glass, practically all from bottles, made up a third of all the trash collected. The glass that is collected from this year’s cleanup will be used in a community art project that will be permanently installed in a local children’s museum, extending even further the impact of these efforts in terms of raising awareness, promoting action and igniting change. Environmental awareness is growing, but we need to take our concerns one step further and simply look around us. Visit your neighbors, talk with each other about the problems you see in your neighborhood and how to fix them, and create your own community cleanup. You’ll be surprised to see the collective joy and satisfaction that comes with making a difference in the part of the world that we know best, starting with the side of the road. Jennifer Rubbo is the Fall Kill Watershed Coordinator at Hudson River Sloop Clearwater.