When the snow starts to melt in Minnesota, a whole new world begins to surface. Trash appears everywhere. An empty Snickers wrapper by a light pole, a crumpled plastic Big Gulp in the gutter, a soggy paper bag along the boulevard. Trash is birthed from the snow in the spring. An entire season’s worth of garbage is revealed in every snowbank, pile, and soggy front yard.
It’s unbelievable how much trash builds up over the winter. Stuff blew from overflowing dumpsters along the curb on trash day. Beverage bottles that spilled unnoticed out of someone’s car. An entire bag of McDonald’s sandwich wrappers, French fry sleeves, and empty soda cups discarded on the sidewalk. It’s heartbreaking to see so much destruction along the roadways and sidewalks as the winter melts away. Since no one has been outside much since Thanksgiving, no one has picked up any trash.
Granted, I am not sure they would even if the weather is nice. I have lived in Austin for 10 years and am amazed at how much trash I see sitting in people’s front yards and sidewalks. One of the most trash-strewn areas of town is the high school athletic fields. I see trash constantly along the fence at the north side of the fields and scattered in the southeast corner. These fields are beautiful. It saddens me to see them so trash-covered.
It’s not just Austin. I see this happen all over Minnesota when the snow turns to liquid. Trash appears in the ditches along I-90 and 1-35. It’s visible along the highways and quiet country roads too. Sometimes a few pieces, sometimes it looks like someone dumped a week’s worth of trash from the back of their pick-up truck. The weirdest stuff springs from the brush along the roads.
Last year, I started to do something about it. When I walked around town, whenever possible, I carried a trash bag with me and picked up trash along the way. One time, I filled a large garbage bag in just 4 blocks. This year, I decided to make a 30-day challenge of it. I would commit to picking up trash for 30 minutes on 30 different days. I originally talked about this on March 27 in my blog post A Trashy History.
Since that initial post, I have run into a few issues with completing this challenge:
1. My body isn’t as young as it used to be. All that bending-over and standing up is hard on my back. The squatting and standing up is hard on my legs and butt. I feel old and out of shape completing this challenge. I have acquired one of those grabbers to help me pick up trash without the need to bend over. My back feels much better…but my hand is really tired from that grabbing trigger. I have exchanged back pain for carpal tunnel.
My new trash grabber/back saver.
2. Life is busy…even in a pandemic when I spend most of my time at home. Between the end of the semester busy, keeping up with family and friends, and all the other stuff that life brings, getting out to complete this challenge has been hard. Other things have taken a higher priority.
3. The weather has been all over the place. It’s spring in Minnesota. When I came up with this idea, we were in the middle of a Fool’s Spring. I forgot to take this into account. Optimism got the better of me on this one.
4. My garbage can has limited space. One Saturday, I decided to pick up trash under a back road that curves under I-90 and left with 3 full, large garbage bags of trash. My small dumpster could only hold 2 of the bags. Luckily, a wonderful friend let me put one in her dumpster (Thank you, Vickie!). I realized then that I can only pick up as much trash as I can fit in my dumpster. Once the dumpster is full, I can’t collect any more trash until after it has been emptied.
Before I collected trash. There was trash spread under the overpass, along both sides of the road and at least 30 feet to either side of the bridges.
After the area was cleaned up. You can see 3 bags of trash and a black tray I collected from under and around this overpass.
I still plan to complete this challenge; however, it is not as easy to complete as I first thought it would be. Stay tuned for further updates…and a cleaner community.
Links to the Trash Trilogy
Part 1 – A Trashy History
Part 2 – A Rather Trashy Subject
Part 3 – A Trashy Finish
