Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Keep America Beautiful!

We hope everyone will join us this week for another tempting Pathfinder Produce fresh fruits and vegetables market.  Come on down to the Village Commons between 1 and 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 28, for the tastiest produce around!

Here at Pathfinder, we are gearing up for Splash Path on Saturday, May 21, which will include exhibits by many local vendors and our ever-popular raffle auction.  To register for the 5K, visit splashpath.racewire.com, and learn more about the after-run party and other offerings at our website’s Splash Path pages.

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It’s spring, a season of renewal!  This week, I’m digressing from our usual veggie blog to sing the praises of community volunteers in the New Berlin area who participated in the annual NYS Route 8 clean-up project as part of our local Earth Day observances.

Student volunteers and our friends from New York Pizzeria, Chase Health, Stevie’s Speidies, and Preferred Mutual Insurance walked along a section of busy Route 8 to pick up the trash that was revealed following the snowmelt.  Over 60 people went along 7.5 miles in two-and-a-half hours, and picked up 72 bags of garbage.  You can see more about the clean-up day at New York Pizzeria’s Facebook page.

While this is tremendous, it begs the question: Why are people throwing litter along the roadways?  It’s just wrong to chuck your garbage out the window of your car.

When I was a kid, there was a famous ad by the Keep America Beautiful Campaign, which featured Iron Eyes Cody, a stoic Native American who shed tears over the state of our planet and man’s disregard for the natural world.  That ad had a tremendous impact on me and drove home the message, “People start pollution, people can stop it.”
 
The pollution solution starts with each of us … if you have trash in your car, just hang on to it until you get home or to another appropriate place to dispose of it.  Try to recycle as much as you can, or better still, try to buy products that have the least amount of non-biodegradable packaging as possible.  Use cloth shopping bags, return your deposit bottles, and follow your municipality’s sorting and recycling procedures.

Founded in 1953, Keep America Beautiful (KAB) is a thriving organization with over 600 local affiliates, and continues its mission to prevent littering, encourage recycling and reuse, and to beautify communities.  Our local affiliate, Keep Mohawk Valley Beautiful, will have a kick-off gathering this week for regional Great American Cleanup events.  To learn more, visit the group’s Facebook page.

In closing, I’ll share some KAB stats on the costs of American littering:
  • Over 51 billion pieces of litter land on U.S. roadways each year; that works out to about 6,729 items per mile.
  •  Litter cleanup costs the U.S. about $11.5 billion each year, with businesses paying $9.1 billion.  Governments, schools, and other organizations pick up the remainder of the costs.
  • The presence of litter in a community takes a toll on quality of life, property values, and housing prices.  KAB found that litter in a community decreases property values by 7%.
  • Tobacco-related litter makes up about 35% of all litter.  Since 2009, KAB has implemented a Cigarette Litter Prevention Program in over 1,500 communities that has helped reduce cigarette waste in those communities.


Until next time, enjoy the great outdoors, and think green,

Lori