This morning, I made my second
attempt at volunteering with the Park Ranger program, and was successful this
time. The snow from two weeks ago had
melted, exposing our prey – heaps of garbage and recyclables! Along with the UEC leader coordinating the
program, two other volunteers and I filled two bags of trash and two bags of
recyclables. As this was one of the
first clean up events of the spring, there was a significant amount of trash in
the park. (As I noted from my previous
attempt to join the Park Ranger crew, trash is covered by snow over the winter.) At the bottom of a hill near Riverside High
School, it seemed like someone simply dumped over a trash can.
I feel like I sound older than my
thirty-three years when I write this, but I’m going to write it anyway. When I grew up, littering was considered a cardinal
sin. Dropping a gum wrapper on the
street was an act of willful malice.
This was a belief instilled in me by parents, school, and peers with
similar upbringing. I suppose today’s urban
schools face bigger issues than littering.
When a child is worrying about where their next meal will come from,
where the empty potato chip bag from their last meal goes is a lesser concern.
This volunteer experience is about
more than simply picking up trash. A
clean park has a ripple effect on the community. The park becomes a welcoming place; people
feel safe, and parents want to bring their children here. Creating a clean park was the starting point
for the community group who planted the seeds of the Urban Ecology Center. They observed that the dirty, neglected park
space was ideal for criminals, and began cleaning up the area. As a community is active in caring about its
public spaces, crime diminishes. The
founding members cleaned up Riverside Park and began to use it to teach
students in the area about science and nature.
Getting children re-engaged with their natural environments forms a
foundation for environmental stewardship throughout their lives.
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