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10/06/2016 12:01 AMI Would Be One with Earth
Again
And Grieve Not As The Seasons
Pass,
But Joyous In The Pulse of
Grass.
Exultant With The Beat of Rain.
I Would Be One With Earth
Again,
One With Her Joy, One With Her
Pain.
Jennie L. Vedder
1892—1982
One of my favorite places to walk is to Vedder Point, a vista high up off the Stony Creek Trolley Trail with a stunning view of the Long Island Sound and the Thimble Islands. There is a poem etched into a plaque made of polished pink Stony Creek granite written by Jennie Vedder, a poet, nature lover, and school teacher, who, although not a woman of means (she secretly hoarded her small salary for four decades), donated 27 acres to the Branford Land Trust upon her death in 1982 to protect this wildlife sanctuary that’s enjoyed by thousands of people each year.
This lovely woman is probably turning over in her grave as every time I’ve hiked up there in recent months, I’ve found the area littered with the remains of a campfire party—Bud Light cans, soda bottles, cigarette butts, fast food trash. Just disgusting.
Lately I’ve been bringing a bag with me that I stuff with all the garbage that I not only find up there, but all along the trail.
This last trip someone had done something even worse than littering, defacing the plaque with a couple’s initials in indelible black ink.
What is going on? Am I imagining it, or am I more and more seeing garbage strewn along the sides of local roads, tossed out of car windows, in parks and woods and beaches, in all of these beautiful preserved spaces we’re so blessed to have here on the shoreline.
As a Baby Boomer I remember the popular 1960s Keep America Beautiful TV campaign “Every Litter Bit Hurts.” It was created in reaction to the growing problem of litter after the Interstate Highway System began construction in the late 1950s. Through the decades, Keep America Beautiful was joined by many other nonprofit organizations to encourage communities to prevent littering.
But it was that catchy phrase that left the lasting impression on me that littering is wrong and simply not an option.
Today, we can’t feign ignorance about what a serious negative impact human actions are having on the environment, so why are we so complacent?
It’s terrific that our local towns have organized beach and park clean-up days, although it’s a shame that it’s necessary. But what about all the rest of the days of the year when people are littering without any sense of personal responsibility or thought for the future of the planet?
We have had an anti-litter law in Connecticut since 1890 with serious fines for littering, but it’s hard to enforce and it doesn’t seem to be curtailing the problem.
I’m pretty sure that the spike I’m seeing in littering isn’t limited to my town, I contacted the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP) to see what I could learn.
“We are concerned about what we see,” says Dennis Schain, spokesman for DEEP. “Some of the ethic about not littering that seemed to have taken strong root in society seems to have faded and we’re seeing an uptick in poor behavior in terms of littering...It’s amazing to see people tossing things out of car windows.”
Schain notes that most people are good about bringing out what they bring in while walking and picnicking in smaller parks that don’t have trash receptacles.
“But we do have places where littering has become an issue and instead of using our limited funds to make needed repairs or build something people will enjoy, we have to divert our [staff] to pick up trash people leave in the parks. In addition to how unsightly litter is and the risks to the environment, we’re now wasting time and money because of people who don’t pick up what they bring in with them.”
I recently learned that cigarette butts, a serious threat to wildlife, can take from five years to as many as 400 to completely decompose and they’re the most littered item in the world with 4.5 trillion discarded annually! So yes, even something that small needs to be properly discarded.
A recent survey by Green Eco Services reports that 75 percent of Americans admit they’ve littered within the last five years. That’s an astonishing figure. And the most common litter offenders are men between 18 and 34, and people who purchase fast food at least twice a week.
So, what can we do? The good news is we really can make a difference as individuals by addressing this problem in pretty simple ways:
1. Participate in local town-wide clean-ups, but also keep a trash bag in your car and carry one with you when you go for a walk to pick up litter along the way.
2. Discard litter in front of your house, including the street, when you go out to get the mail or newspaper.
3. Make sure your trashcans have securely attached lids and don’t leave unopened containers of trash at the curbside.
4. Buy less food in plastic containers, recycle, and bring your own cloth bags to the supermarket to reduce the amount of eco-unfriendly material escaping into the environment.
5. Report trash in state parks and forests by calling the DEEP dispatch center (860-424-3333) and your local police about trash in local parks and beaches.
6. Most important, set a good example yourself by not littering. And teach your children and grandchildren—and keep reminding teenagers—to protect and save the planet they’re inheriting and not add to the problem by simply recycling and throwing trash where it belongs—in trashcans.
Amy J. Barry is a Baby Boomer, who lives in Stony Creek with her husband and assorted pets. She writes features and reviews for Shore Publishing newspapers and is an expressive arts educator. Read more My Generation columns online at www.zip06.com