By Erich Eipert
This story has a dejecting part as well as something heroic and uplifting. Let’s get the cheerless part out of the way first.
Litter on roads
I don’t think about litter much until I’m on foot and see great quantities of it hidden in the grass of the roadside ditch. Or drive past piles of filled plastic bags after a cleanup effort. There’s a surprising amount of rubbish out there. I seldom see anyone throw anything from a car window like in the old days, yet somehow the garbage accumulates. Maybe litterers are more active after dark. A study or two has probably addressed this, but I’m getting off track. I can understand drinkers who drive, and underage occupants, throwing out their empties, but who and what accounts for all the other trash? Fortunately Washington state, where I live, isn’t the worst place when it comes to offenders. I suspect the reason has nothing to do with the intellect-challenged “Litter and it will hurt” signs along the roads. But again, I digress.
Litter in the Mississippi River
When I discovered the scale of dumping into rivers, I was stupefied. I grew up in Iowa near the Mississippi River and still return from time to time, so the tally of items recovered from the river caught my interest. See the list below–there’s some heavy duty junk in that tally! If you think this inventory huge, imagine the effort it took to collect it all.
Here’s the uplifting part. There are people out there dedicated to cleaning up our rivers. They don’t just pull stuff out of water; they also educate the public about the problem. The job sounds a bit more strenuous than walking a mile of sponsored roadway and collecting soft-drink containers and diapers. I haven’t seen the 2013 trash inventory yet, but I’m sure it’ll be just as interesting as 2012’s.
Chad Pregracke, the person behind generating this list, is himself on a list. He’s one of the top 10 CNN Heroes of the year. Actually, he tops the list as CNN’s 2013 Hero of the Year. Pregracke founded a cleanup/public awareness nonprofit called Living Lands & Waters and most of the year can be found on his cleanup barge, cleaning up rivers.
Messages in bottles
About Living Lands & Waters
Headquartered in East Moline, Illinois, Living Lands & Waters is a 501 (c)(3) environmental organization that was established by Chad Pregracke in 1998. Since the organization was founded, Living Lands & Waters has grown to be the only “industrial strength” river cleanup organization like it in the world.
Spending up to 9 months a year living and traveling on the barge, the Living Lands & Waters’ crew hosts river cleanups, watershed conservation initiatives, workshops, tree plantings and other key conservation efforts. Living Lands & Waters
Partial inventory of the items Living Lands &Waters pulled from waterways in 2012 (as found in the 2012 Annual Report):
5-gallon buckets……………….3,221
55-gallon drums……………….5,850
Bags of trash ……………….. 83,936
Sinks…………………………………. 133
Tires……………………………….67,771
Barge line ……………………. 17,752 feet
Refrigerators……………………….950
Air conditioners……………………. 66
Washing machines…………….. 218
Gas tanks and cans…………… 399
Propane tanks…………………. 1,335
Mannequin heads&hands………..7
Hot water heaters………………. 296
Portable toilets…………………….. 21
Barbecue grills…………………… 154
Shopping carts………………………49
Coolers………………………………..311
Bowling balls………………………… 96
Toy dolls…………………………….. 293
Boats…………………………………… 68
Freezers………………………………104
Cars………………………………………. 9
Balls …………………………….. 19,733
250-gallon drums…………………..63
Milk crates…………………………. 712
Bicycles………………………………109
Life jackets………………………… 220
Tractors…………………………………19
Trash cans…………………………..337
Car engines…………………………. 14
Chairs………………………………1,095
Stoves………………………………. 191
TVs…………………………………….217
Lawnmowers………………………..53
Couches…………………………….. 54
Motorcycles………………………….12
Cargo vans…………………………….1
Dishwashers………………………..66
Barge cable ……………………8,811 ft.
Bath tubs……………………………..26
Mattresses…………………………..92
Duck decoys……………………. 243
Trucks…………………………………..1
Toilets…………………………………97
Septic tanks………………………… 2
School bus stop ………………….. 1
Safes………………………………… 22
Bags of police riot gear ………..6
Construction cones…………….101
Big Wheels………………………… 45
Parking meters……………………..1
Pianos………………………………… 4
Jet skis…………………………………6
Messages in bottles…………….65
Buoys………………………………..173
Sunken barges…………………….. 3
Hot tubs……………………………….12
Foot-thick Styrofoam……………13 football fields
Fifth-wheel trailer …………………..1
Campers……………………………….1
Ronald McDonald shoe …………1