Cleaning up your community AND finding solutions
Having cleaned up my community over three years and observed or participated in various other clean-ups, I believe there are four types of clean-ups (I’ve excluded encampment clean-ups as that is a whole different ballgame).
Ongoing maintenance cleanup
Periodic maintenance cleanup
One-time cleanup with a possible solution
Clean-up IS the solution
Clean-ups along highways are an example of an ongoing maintenance clean-up. There is likely to be a persistent flow of garbage that accumulates quickly and requires frequent cleaning. Garbage along waterways is another example of garbage accumulating from various sources and deposited along creeks and rivers. lakes, and oceans.
Clean-ups along secondary roads may fall in the periodic clean-up category where litter accumulates but more slowly than it does along a highway. Garbage along waterways is another example of garbage accumulating from a wide variety of sources. Cleanups are still required but not nearly as frequently.
With these two scenarios, there are individual problems that can be solved. Perhaps some litter is coming from garbage trucks or open-bed trucks. Maybe storm drains don’t have litter capture devices, allowing litter to flow into creeks. Municipalities can put measures in place to limit littering from these types of sources, but given the multitude of sources of litter, completely solving roadside litter is a very tall task.
Clean-ups with a defined source of solvable litter would fall in the one-time cleanup with a possible solution category. In my town, we have a couple of instances that fall into this category:
In one watershed, I removed 1,000 baseballs from adjacent baseball fields. Getting the baseball league to take ownership of the issue leads to a solution that does not require future community or municipal clean-up efforts.
Another instance was at a local college. I had been finding tennis balls throughout the Moraga watershed and assumed they were just from backyards and parks until I realized there was a small creek next to a local college’s tennis courts. The tennis courts were close to the headwaters of this creek, so balls were deposited along the creek for several miles until it reached a local reservoir. It is quite possible that thousands of tennis balls made it to the reservoir.
One thousand tennis balls later, the creek behind the court was cleared of balls, and the college was engaged to take ownership of the situation so that no further community clean-up would be necessary and the balls would not spread throughout the watershed and the reservoir.
Another similar scenario is a shopping center not maintaining its dumpster area well and feeding litter into the storm drains and creek system. Getting proper maintenance of the dumpster area will prevent litter from entering storm drains and then the creek system.
The point is that these types of cleanups identify a problem that can and should be solved.
The last category I have found is where the cleanup IS the solution. The reason for the litter/dumping no longer exists, so when the area is cleaned up it should stay that way.
In my community, we have an open space called Mulholland Ridge. It is a pretty place, home to a herd of cows, at least 77 varieties of birds, and a popular spot for families and folks exercising or walking their dogs. Decades ago, the area was open to vehicular traffic and with that traffic came lots of litter. Virtually all of the litter found on Mulholland Ridge was from when there was car traffic on the road. Now that it is only a pedestrian hiking path, litter is unlikely to return in material amounts. Hence, the clean-up essentially served as the long-term solution.
My point is that when we do cleanups, we should do so with SOLUTIONS in mind. If we are willing to put in the effort to clean up our communities, going further to push for solutions magnifies our impact and makes it long-term. That’s something even the cows would be happy about.
