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.
***
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
