Thursday, December 31, 2015

New Yeas Eve Clean-Up

Along Old Ballard Road to Broomley Bridge the fading plants exposed a lot more of old trash. Bottles, cans, everything you would expect. And we filled three bags!



Wednesday, December 30, 2015

How it all started

When Broomley Road Bridge got torn down my husband and I started walking every Sunday morning from our home in Westwoods along Old Ballard Road to the bridge. We were interested in the bridge project and didn't want to miss a step.
It's close to 4 miles from our home to the bridge, so we walked about 8 miles every weekend. It is a beautiful road, especially along the creek. In the summer you can see snapping turtles hunting in the water, snakes warming up on the asphalt, beautiful caterpillars and birds. But we also saw a lot of trash along the way. Huge amounts or trash. After getting upset about it we started collecting it and piled it up along the way. Later that day my husband would pick it up with his car and dispose it.
But the more we got aware of the problem, the more trash we saw. Not only new trash, but really old trash, too. Mostly cans and bottles. We started bringing our own plastic bags to collect the trash. Sometimes five or six bags on a day.
Then winter started and the plants along the side of the road faded. We saw even more trash. We brought large contractor bags and filled them up to the top. By now we had so much trash collected, that it would easily fill up a small dump truck.
But there was no end to it. After seven month of collecting trash - old and new - we thought it would be about time to document it. And here we go.