Picking Up

Every morning and evening I take a walk with each of our pups, which adds up to about two miles every day. I always walk the same path from our house to our front entrance turn and back because it has a slight incline (good for my legs) and there are usually no people around, which makes my dogs happy. I clean up after my pups, but I also pick up any trash I see. It's something I can do to help keep our neighborhood clean, and it's easy enough.

On this particular morning last month I found six different drink containers littering the road, which sadly is not unusual. Some were covered in ants, which I shook off before I put them in my bag.

One of the containers I picked up was a heavy duty aluminum cup with the words "Infinitely Recyclable" on it, which I thought was pretty ironic. Too many people who drive along my walking route just drop whatever trash they have instead of properly disposing of it.

I washed it out and tried to bend it back into a cup shape so I could use it as a pencil or brush holder, but whoever crushed it before discarding it did too good of a job. In the end it went into my recycling bin, where I hope it will be whisked off to become useful again once it's been processed.

While picking up I have found tools, cigarette packs, lighters, vape pens, alcohol bottles, alcohol cans, receipts, empty envelopes, homework and food containers as well as many, many coffee cups. Some kid who didn't like their lunch dumped it on the side of the road one morning. I found the food still in the ziplock bags it was packed in. I found something once that was so disgusting I still can't talk about it to anyone but my guy. No matter how I felt about it, I picked it all up and disposed of it, because that's something I can do for my community.