New Thing #114--Rubbish!

The weather rebounded nicely today after yesterday's chilliness. It was a great day to walk to church. For the walk home I brought a grocery bag and I picked up trash.

Most of the walk is along a 3-lane, relatively busy suburban road. There are some houses that face it. A small portion of the road contains a concrete bridge that goes over a creek, and some of the land next to the road is waiting to be developed.

I would have told you the area was relatively clean. When you start looking for trash, it's amazing how much there is! I found several aluminum cans, fast food drink cups, plastic bags, pieces of paper and cardboard, and other miscellaneous trash such as cigarette packs, candy wrappers and straws.

My rules for this activity:

• No cigarette butts. I was dressed for church, and didn't want to kneel down on the ground and pick up the hundreds I saw.
  
• No tiny pieces of paper. Again, I wasn't dressed for it. Not to pat myself on the back too much, but I thought that any cleaning I did would be good; I wasn't going for perfection.
  
• No broken glass
• No excrement
• No more than two steps into anyone's yard to pick up trash

I brought along a newspaper sleeve to put my hand in to keep it clean, but most of the trash we found was paper, or dry. Nothing was gross to pick up. I did empty a half-filled water bottle I picked up so the bag wouldn't get too heavy, but that was the nastiest thing I found.

We filled up a grocery store plastic bag. Here's a picture: