Leave the World Better Than You Found It?
One can see how devastating this area has become with litter and illegal dumping. I rode into West Bethlehem Township and passed through Marianna Borough outskirts. I am sad at how much worse it has gotten with garbage. Televisions, couches, tires, bottles, building materials, etc., all over hillsides and along roadways. The township isn't void of waste either, but at least they have yearly clean-ups to help alleviate the problem. I know the one main channel from where I live has been clean for years in the borough. I have even seen a television weed-whacked around and never picked up!
Yearly clean-ups help solve what is now an epidemic, one that affects our health. Cameras help. Social media posts help because it's an avenue to educate people on WHY littering is terrible. Schools should do more and even take field trips to dump sites so kids can learn. Churches should do more. Non-profits who claim to support improvements to the natural world can do more.
Most importantly, PARENTS, above all, need to do more. We are in this together whether we want to be or not. It is a solution that requires all of us.
People might say, "We'll do something about it if you don't like it." I would say, "Don't assume I haven't." I have tried. It is a laborious job, and I found myself cleaning one road only to go back to the same road the following year and the next year because it's littered up again within that time. I have helped clean roadways and the creek for years, even without events. And while I still participate in clean-ups, I no longer go out on my own because it is an endless cycle and can leave a person quite depressed and physically exhausted.
I will be doing a YouTube video of this before long to show how bad it has gotten within a few short years here. I have tried creating "stop-littering" art for people to print out and pass around, but I have no idea if anyone makes use of that. Garbage is affecting our streams and creek. It affects animals pushing through the trash to find food or drink. It involves drinking water that comes from the Monongahela River. It most certainly brings in crime and drugs and hurts the economy. The only thing we seem to attract here is a toxic industry, and then we wonder why? And when production arrives, everyone calls it "progress." Sometimes I think the world has gone mad or mindless because it looks like it. We are a society that accepts garbage, too, because even when there are clean-ups, so few show up. But you will find them all over social media saying something needs to happen, but what they leave out is "by someone else and not me."
Even something as small as cigarette butts affect plants! Source. Source.
Find out what the 20 surprising facts about litter are HERE.
Here is some stop-littering art to help spread the word that littering is wrong.
"Americans make more trash than anyone else on the planet, throwing away about 7.1 pounds per person per day, 365 days a year. Across a lifetime that rate means, on average, we are each on track to generate 102 tons of trash. Each of our bodies may occupy only one cemetery plot when we're done with this world, but a single person's 102-ton trash legacy will require the equivalent of 1,100 graves. Much of that refuse will outlast any grave marker, pharaoh's pyramid or modern skyscraper: One of the few relics of our civilization guaranteed to be recognizable twenty thousand years from now is the potato chip bag."
― Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash
UPDATE-4-9-2023- This area in the borough is finally cleaned up! Thank you Marianna Borough, Range Resources, Washington County Conservation District, Ten Mile Creek Wastershed Association, and many more!
