Editors Note: This article is originally published at the Green Mom’s Community by Lena at Over Coffee the Green Edition.
My son’s school adopted a half mile section of road via the Adopt-A-Road program and asked for volunteers to help clean it up. I was very excited about partaking in this worthy program so I immediately signed up. This past weekend I bundled up, grabbed some work gloves, a travel mug of hot coffee, and headed out into the fresh clean air to pick up debris on the side of the road (what better way to spend a Sunday morning). There were 7 of us who spent 3 hours beautifying our half mile stretch of roadway. I have to say, it was a very positive, fulfilling, and eye-opening experience for me.
We picked up everything from plastic cups to tires, from a soccer ball to plastic bags, from syringes to cigarette butts. I have to admit, these last two items really surprised me.
We were in a part of town that many would consider “good” yet we still found 2 syringes. I guess this just goes to show you that, in this day and age, there really are no “good” parts of town.
Within the first few steps I was amazed by the number of cigarette butts that we were picking up so I decided to start counting them. In half a mile stretch I alone picked up 1149 cigarette butts! Remember, there were 6 other people picking them up too. I found this to be very disturbing. It meant that over 1000 times a smoker drove by this small stretch of road and flicked their cigarette butt (undoubtedly still lite) out their window apparently thinking that the side-of-the-road was their personal ashtray. Unbelievable!
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