River Clean Up Service Project

This morning, we all met up at the San Tomas Aquino River (4974 Westmont Avenue, San Jose) to clean up the trash that had been accumulating near the river as it was National River Clean Up Day. We put on gloves and walked along the side of the creek picking up trash that had gotten caught in the rocks and trees near the river with trash pickers. Below are some pictures of Divya and I reaching under the trees to collect trash. We worked in pairs, in which one partner carried a black bag for trash and the other partner carried a white bag for recycling. As we walked along the river, we picked up the trash we found and split it into trash and recycling so that the event organizers could discard of the trash appropriately.

It was pretty eye-opening to see how all of the individual pieces of trash we collected added up to a lot of trash, as shown in the images below. We have all been culprits of littering at some point or another. For example, when we're sitting at a table eating lunch and someone else's empty chip bag flies away, it's pretty easy to sit back and let it fly away - after all, it wasn't your chip bag anyways. But, what we don't realize in that moment, is that all these individual pieces of trash accumulate near rivers and pollute the ecosystems there, which can be extremely detrimental overtime as it contaminates our water and injures/kills wildlife.

Individually, each bag didn't seem to contain too much trash, BUT... 

Together, all of our bags added up to a lot of trash

The event organizers also had all of the participants take a survey (shown below) of what items were most common in our bags of trash. What most of us found was that bags of chips, food wrappers, and plastic shopping bags that we handle everyday were the most common. This just goes to show that having clean local creeks really is in our hands. This was an extremely astonishing experience that made me realize how conscious and cautious we need to be of trash disposal. It takes 30 extra seconds to walk to a trash can after lunch and dispose of any trash. Though those 30 seconds may add up to a lot of "lost time," it ultimately outweighs the alternative of having our creeks and rivers polluted. We all need to take more responsibility when disposing of trash because soon, the damage done by pollution and littering will become irreversible. Right now, because we can do something to alleviate the damage, we must. I will definitely be participating in events like this in the future as it is extremely crucial - now more than ever - that we play an active role in keeping our planet clean.