3 ways to make every day Green Up Day

If you spend your time caring for someone else, using one of your precious days off to look after yet another needy being isn’t always at the top of the list.

But when that’s Mother Earth, your help is crticially important.

On May 1 my neighbor and I got together for Vermont’s Green Up Day to pick up trash along our country road. Here’s what we hauled out:

1 length of wire fencing

1 plastic bumper

2 large styrofoam panels

a white mug from a jewelry company with the words “be dazzled”

1 ripped tarp

a golf ball commemorating Jeffrey and Julie’s 2003 wedding

15 tires (14 for cars and 1 from an old tractor)

9 bags of assorted trash—think moldy carpeting, random unidentifiable bits of plastic, pieces of a Lincoln grill, a few empty Marlboro packages, and all manner of beverage containers (some decades old)

It took Jenn and me three hours to corral everything into the bright green bags supplied by Green Up Vermont (we had a lot of steep inclines to traverse). Af the end we were tired, dirt-smudged, a little sore … and SO happy. We were proud of what we had accomplished and enjoyed spending some meaningful time together. It felt like we were doing something good for ourselves while we were doing something good for, well, the entire planet.

If your town has a similar clean-up event this spring, consider getting involved. If you’ve already missed it—or want to do more, bless you!—consider these ideas:

• Bring a small bag to fill on your regular outdoor excursions. I get it—running with a bag of trash isn’t fun, but you can at least pick up a few things on your way home as you cool down.

• Corral your own debris in your vehicle so it doesn’t become someone else’s problem. If you don’t have a bag for throw-aways in your car, be sure to do regular cleanouts—especially as we head into the finer weather here in the Northern Hemisphere, when windows may be open and errant material might just take flight.

• Remember: reduce and reuse come before recycle—let’s all avoid making trash in the first place. Get in the habit of using a reusable straw (glass and stainless steel are my favorites), and pull out that travel mug you stashed at the back of the cabinet when COVID started—some locations are starting to allow them once again. And I was thrilled that I didn’t receive the usual polite finger-wagging when I used my fabric bag to carry my groceries to the checkout counter at my local food coop. For the past year I always forgot that I wasn’t supposed to do that … but now it’s OK again!

I’ll admit—we had plenty of choice words for the people who chose to dump their trash in a lovely rural area instead of disposing of it properly. And I can appreciate that some of this debris may have inadvertently escaped a moving vehicle. But if we can all make it part of our daily routine to deal with our our debris we can enjoy pristine landscapes and an environment that’s beautiful for generations to come.

Mother Nature has a knack for making even the yuckiest trash look beautiful … but she has plenty of material to work with so there’s no reason to help her along