Litter

The Faribault Flyers Bike and Ski Club picked up trash last week. The club adopted a portion of highway 60, out of Faribault. This means the club has committed to pick up litter along both sides of the highway section, at least twice a year.

Gary and I are members of this bike club and were available to help. It was a windy day, and that was challenging…keeping the plastic garbage bag from blowing away, or its twisting and dumping all the contents out. But, the sun was out and it was a mild temperature. 

We were all given fluorescent vests to wear. The traffic on this particular highway is heavy, and a little dauting at first, being so close to the road with the cars whizzing by. We were given garbage bags to fill, then instructed to leave them on the side of the road to be picked up.

We were told mark with a bag… and do not touch… drug paraphernalia or firearms, if we came upon any. I found what looked like a small firearm. I did pick it up because I was fairly certain it was too small to be real. It ended up being a large cigarette lighter in the shape of a gun. Sigh.

It felt good to be outdoors on this spring day, while picking up the discarded pop and beer cans, liquor bottles, miscellaneous paper, fast food bags and cups and utensils, cigarette lighters and cigarette butts (the worse). I think there is a mentality that cigarette butts are not litter, so smokers just throw them out the window. There are a lot of them!

It felt good to participate in this community service. There were several of us from the bike club that showed up to help. Many hands make light work, although it was still hard work. We had a handy, dandy picker-upper which worked well. It reduced the amount of bending over a little bit, during our two-hour shift. 

Six months from now, the club will set apart another afternoon to collect trash from the same section of the highway. It’s one of those jobs that is never ending, but I think we make a difference.