FRANK BERNHEISEL

Picking It Up

January 20, 2009

Martin Luther King day, a national holiday celebrated in all fifty states is becoming recognized as a day for community service. In that spirit, Kathy and I started on our morning walk with two plastic grocery bags each, in which to store litter picked up along the bike path.

Kathy widened the area to include the side of Shreve Road and in the process found two large empty plastic trash bags that were themselves litter. Because we had filled the grocery bags, this was fortuitous. The result is that we filled both the bags and they are now filling our trash cart. This means that any trash that we generate between now and Thursday night, when we set out trash and recycling, will have to go in separate trash bags. Fortunately, our service from Fairfax County does not limit us to just what will fit into our cart.

The litter fell into the usual categories that we see when doing litter surveys at my company: carry-out food containers (including Starbuck's cups, a better class of litterer, I suppose), beverage containers, tobacco-related products, auto parts, newspapers (which probably blew out of the bins on recycling day), construction debris, etc, etc.

The litter that we did NOT pick up were the plastic bags with dog crap in them. Figure this one out -- people walk their dog, scoop up the crap in a plastic bag, and then throw it into the bushes.

Why not just...