Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Spring Clean Up & Recycling


Looking proud of her work.

This weekend we spent some time outside enjoying a day of 60 degree weather. Since it was so nice, we went for a family walk in our neighborhood. As we walked we saw lots of trash, aluminum cans and bottles strewn along the side of the road. Nature Girl was upset that people would throw trash on the ground. She has always been conscientious about putting trash where it belongs and taking care of the Earth. We discussed cleaning up the trash another time when we had bags with us. She agreed that we should clean it up but was worried about getting her hands dirty. Dirty hands, not a problem! We have a box of disposable gloves left over from a tie-dye project.
Monday after school Nature Girl and I set out on another walk wearing our disposable gloves and carrying a few trash bags. We didn't get very far down the road before encountering a new and unfriendly looking dog in our neighborhood. There is a leash law in our town but apparently his family doesn't know about it. We opted to turn around and clean up the other side of the street instead of facing this unfriendly fellow. We filled a bag about a third full with trash and collected half a bag of cans, glass and plastic bottles.

Nature Girl thought we needed a staged photo of the clean up. Here she is picking up a beer can. She crushed and recycled the cans, then sorted the plastic and glass. We took it all out to the the curb where it was recycled the next morning. We'd like to keep working on our neighborhood spring clean up and recycling effort but we have to wait for it to stop raining. It's been raining for days. I just checked the weather and it looks like the rain is supposed to continue through the weekend, so maybe next week.