The 1st Eco-Walk

So today was a pretty normal day, with one exception. As I was getting Katelynn and myself ready to walk to Caleb's school to pick him up, I grabbed a used Walmart sack from our stash. After picking up Caleb and beginning the trek back to our apartment, I said "Hey guys we are gonna pick up trash on the way back." I wasn't sure what kind of response I was going to get. Caleb gave a big "YES!" followed by "We're gonna save the earth." This kind of took me by surprise at first, but kids understand the basics of keeping the environment clean, and they know they have a responsibility to do that. Also, as a future environmental engineer I couldn't help but be proud of that response from my son.

Katelynn wasn't quite as enthusiastic, but was still very active in spotting pieces of trash and picking them up and putting them in the bag. Yes, Aimee, we all washed our hands when we got back. As we picked up the trash, I felt good. All those small wrappers or smashed aluminum cans that I had been walking by for the last two months were no longer ugly eye soars that I wanted to do something about. The wind doesn't blow hard enough here to move the trash around, so you see the same pieces of trash for a long time.

I feel bad for taking this long to do this, but I just never remembered to grab a sack to use. As we were walking and picking up trash (which is called Eco-Walking. There is also Eco-Hiking and Eco-anything if you're picking up trash while doing other stuff) Caleb asked me how the trash got there. I told him that sometimes when people dispose of their trash it is not always secured and it blows away (not as common, but still a possibility) or that people just tossed some of the items there because they didn't care. To this Caleb asked, "Why don't they care?" I wasn't sure. I told him that I didn't know. I am glad that my son can't understand why someone would be that careless.

I think we all go through a time in our lives where we just don't care, but maybe some kids will always care enough to not do certain things. In my life, it was the years that I smoked cigarettes. I would flick the filters out of my car window or wherever I was walking. I usually made sure it was not lit and extinguished as to not start a fire, but did not care about where that filter ended up. I didn't want to put it in an ash tray to smell up my vehicle (especially when I was younger) or my ash tray was full and I was too lazy to empty it. This is my confession. I am not perfect. I can't change what I've done in the past. I can, however, change what I do in the future.

I can't convince everyone to do things that I myself didn't do, but maybe we, as a society, can begin to be more responsible about our planet and surroundings. Things need to change on a large scale when it comes to pollution, but when it comes to successful change, it almost always starts on a small scale first.

I encourage everyone to take an "eco-walk" sometime, if not, just try to be more conscious of how you interact with your surroundings on a daily basis. It is the things we do everyday that end up having the most impact. Daily activities happen 365 times each year.