12/29/12 - Day 4 - Litter Pickup (free)

Yesterday I discovered an exact replica blog of what I'm doing here.  It wasn't anonymous, but it did have pictures.  I need to think about adding pictures to this blog.  I think it would increase the enjoyment but obviously decrease the anonymity.  Further deliberations are in order.

I looked for some volunteer opportunities in my area as well. Obviously something like habitat for humanity would be awesome. Not sure how to keep something like that anonymous either.

I tried to get my kindness attack done earlier than usual today.  Woke up and immediately set to work figuring out what to do.  I decided I wanted to help beautify my fair city by picking up trash.  I knew exactly where to start.  There is a stretch of road on the west side of the city that I frequently run along and I had noticed the trash getting caught in bushes and trees next to a creek.  That was it. 

I thought I would just try to fill one garbage bag and keep going until the bag was full.  It only took me an hour but it was a cold and windy hour.  I wasn't sure what to pick up though.  There are some things I found that were biodegradable (apple core, banana peel etc.) and somethings that I thought would be biodegradable eventually (paper mostly.) Fuck it, I'm picking up everything I see that's not grass or snow. This wasn't easy. There are a ton of cigarette butts along the street. A TON. I told myself this was just retribution for the literally thousands of butts I've thrown out my car window throughout the years. One of my friends in high school told me that it's not really littering because cigarette butts are biodegradable. I always thought the filters were in fact a fabric like cotton. Neither of those are true. The filters are made of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic. They take as long to break down as any other plastic which is a really long time. A bad habit that I have and misinformation that I lazily chose to believe have led me to litter for the past five years. Not good. 

I didn't fill my bag with just cigarette butts though.  The highlights include a rusty screwdriver, a lunchables packaging, an old honda hubcap, another garbage bag partially filled with trash, a full frozen Mountain Dew, a half eaten mystery sandwich, and a shit ton of plastic pop bottles.  I was wearing gloves so I wouldn't get any diseases. 

I'm not sure how anonymous I was being, I wasn't wearing any disguises and somebody could have maybe recognized me driving by on the street.
Money spent so far: $19.87