Week 12 – Easy Pickin’

With the snow almost all gone, with no city garbage pick up for two weeks, with our new Christmas presents to each other it was easy pickin’ this week to fill our two buckets!

The melted snow showcased all the litter that had been hidden for the last two weeks. Tiny spots of snow everywhere almost looked like garbage littering the roads, but there was plenty of trash to pick up.

Waste Management has promised to pick up the mounds of trash on every road, bus stop, etc. but West Seattle has yet to see them. The one good thing is that they promised not to charge anyone for the extra bags of garbage around their initial rubbish can. Merry Christmas!

The best part of picking up litter today was our Christmas presents to each other, which are called Grapplers. To help ease our backs we decided to invest in rubbish-picker-uppers. They worked wonderfully and effortlessly. Ben caught his stride walking and picking up at the same time. We found the occasional garbage that we had to bend down to pick up but that was rare. How fun to play with our new Christmas toys.

Happy New Year / Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!

Ben and Lori

Week 11 – Winter of Our Discontent

It is that time where the pure white snow turns to dirty dishwater brown.  It is that time where the exuberance of more snow on the horizon turns to apathy.  It is that time where flurries dancing off rooftops to sidewalks below bring about groans of more snow to shovel. 

Ben had to talk me into getting bundled up to look for litter this weekend.  I wore my glasses with hope that the sideways snow wouldn’t go into my eyes.  Then I realized that if I used my scarf my glasses fogged up immediately.  Love of the snow turning quickly to loathing. 

Our intent was to get a half a bucket…or one bucket at the most.  Ben spotted broken tire chains on the road.  I found a coffee cup at the bus stop half covered in snow.  Just as we turned back we spotted a bag of trash completely strewn across the sidewalk. 

The snow has made it impossible for any City of Seattle garbage pick up this week and some random raccoon or other animal must have gotten into someone’s rubbish container.  As we pick up the mess a neighbor shouts out a “Thank You,” which makes us feel a tad bit warmer.

Week 10 – Snow Problem

Despite our doubts regarding the “WINTER STORM OF THE CENTURY!!!!” we succumbed to the general panic incited by the media and took off early Saturday to revisit the same neighborhood we tidied up in Week 4. Ten minutes later we proudly filled our 19th and 20th buckets!

With frozen hands we climbed back into the car and slowly thawed out.  We concluded that as long as we continue to dedicate ourselves to this cause, there will be an eternal supply of litter (enough to make you dizzy!)   Unfortunately for the environment it’s like the old Doritos commercial, “Clean up all you want, we’ll make more!”

 Today we spent the morning frolicking in two powdery inches of West Seattle snow (for those of you not from the Pacific Northwest, snow is really quite rare for us).  As it turned out, Lori and I were wise to go out yesterday since the beautiful blanket of snow would have covered the unsightly trash.

Won’t you join us and help make the world a more beautiful place? We’d love to post about your bucket adventures but until then we’ll continue on, really… its snow problem.

Week 9 – Hertz to look at

Coming home from Costco we spotted an area with an abundance of trash.  We then noticed that it was in front of a business.  We’ve avoided picking up in front businesses and residences for two reasons; it feels like trespassing and they should be picking up their own damn trash! 

If you were a business why would you want an unsightly mess in front of your establishment? It doesn’t particularly make me want to shop there, that’s for sure. 

So we’ve decided that businesses are fair game.  If it happens to be in front of your store, you might end up on our blog.  We have no problem shaming entrepreneurs into cleaning their acts up.  You might just say we are inclined to throw them under a bus…or car.