This week was the 55th Earth Day, and aside from some fun social media posts, and participating in my annual Town Wide Cleanup for the 3rd year in a row, I didn’t think too much about it. 

The town clean up is an “on your own schedule” affair, with the town providing bags, rubber gloves, some loose guidelines and safety tips, and pick up of anything you bag – just leave the special bags on the side of the road, and the DPW or trash service will collect it throughout the month. It’s pretty easy to participate, and since I love taking walks around town, I always prioritize cleaning up my walk route, so the town benefits, and my walks are more pleasant. 

This year, I decided that since I usually see lots of bottles and cans, I would bring an extra bag for recyclables, and bring those home to put into my household recycling cart. In one hour here’s what I brought back: 

I know the grim stats of recycling. Only about 5-9% of plastic is recycled in the US because most of it isn’t collected, it’s contaminated, there are too many types of plastics, the process itself is inefficient, and there is a general lack of demand for the resulting product. 

Picking up trash seems like a Sisyphean task; trying to bag up a tiny fraction of the colossal amount of waste produced by industry and disposed of in any given community to organize them and make them less of a mess. 

And for what? According to Project Drawdown, recycling (plastics specifically) barely rates on the things that will actually improve our chances of survival on this planet – meaning have any type of climate impact so we don’t fry ourselves. I think recycling is in like the bottom 5 in terms of effectiveness. 

As a side note, eliminating food waste, eating more plants, and cutting down on your energy and water use are the most effective. So, it’s worth putting in some effort there, both in your home and in your advocacy. 

But as Camus’ wrote, one must imagine Sisyphus happy. And I don’t know, there’s something about picking up trash. For the right personality type, it can be extremely satisfying. I know tying up my 2 big bags of trash and tabulating my 2 shopping bags of recycling gave me a tangible example of what I had accomplished, and hopefully how many microplastics I removed from the future watershed. When I introduced my dad to recycling years ago, I gave his OCD an endless outlet with cleaning, sorting and arranging tasks. He was a magnificent and prolific recycler. 

Anyways, while I was hauling all of this waste, I actually enjoyed thinking about the stories the trash tells…..

There were about 4 more 40 oz. bottles, along with the ones I’d recycled, the others too obliterated for my paper bags. I wondered about the young people who maybe drank them in the car ride or walk home, and threw them against a telephone poll to judge who had the best aim, or could make the most noise. 

Of the 100 or so nips I found, about half of them were in front of one driveway. An older person lives there, and I know he has a health aide who comes a few times a week. I have to wonder, is the old guy drinking all that, and just throwing it in the driveway, as an act of defiance against whoever is trying to give him care? Or is the caregiver, sick of listening to the patient’s ramblings and offensive screeds, starting every shift with a shot, and leaving the trash as a silent protest against his client? 

The Dunkin’ iced coffee cups in various states of decay just let you know you are in New England. Were they thrown out by someone about to go pick up a date, trying to make the truck as tidy as possible? Or maybe just a celebration of finishing a day of work, and to free up a hand to smoke a cigarette – one of the thousands of butts lining the street. 

There were three purple spoons (family ice cream trip), two side mirrors (angry deer charging a car), five moldy tubs of cream cheese (bagel aficionado with lactose intolerance), a crumpled tank top (backseat exhibitionist), and endless fast food bags and wrappers (oh the high blood pressure and heart attacks to come). 

I’m fascinated by the stories the trash holds. And I think it’s kind of fitting and tragic that these are the remnants of our lives here on earth. These broken bottles and greasy bags, covered in our fingerprints and DNA, are what’s left behind from our days, our desires, and our broken hearts. We toss them by the road, maybe like scrawling on a wall or a bathroom door, “I was here.” And then, someone like me picks them up, ties them in a bag, and they are hauled away to live out the rest of their half lives in a giant pit, along with all of the relics of all of the other humans we share this planet with, decaying so slowly, and reminding us that no matter how small or big our lives are, we have a greater impact on our world than we ever really appreciate.