Our Planet is worse off now than it was when Earth Day began decades ago. I'm encouraging my kids to study and learn about the sciences, specifically space and the universe, in hopes that they will discover another livable planet we can destroy so future generations will have a place to live when Earth can no longer sustain life. I haven't told my kids that, yet. But I did tell them we needed to pick up trash in our neighborhood on the day of 'Earth Day' to preserve some of the beauty that still remains on our planet. I gave them an informative kid friendly lecture on littering and how it is killing our planet as well as the animals on our planet. I told them plastic bags and other trash that is laying around strangles and suffocates birds, cats, rodents and other living creatures because they can't free themselves of it if and when they get tangled up in it. Because Esperanza is a huge animal lover, I knew this would get her attention and was the best way for her to understand the significance and impact littering has on our planet. I'm a realist, the truth hurts...but sometimes that's what it takes to get the point across even with kids. It worked. Ezra didn't understand much, but Esperanza did. Ezra gets pumped up when Esperanza does so they both REALLY took off with our plan and were very eager to get out and pick up trash! I gave them some salad tongs for picking up the trash with, both kids decided they needed to wear their bike helmets for protection (or maybe super powers for all I know), we grabbed a garbage bag and we hit the streets.
I had no idea they would get as into it as they did. Esperanza wouldn't leave any bit of trash left behind. And we live in a pretty trashy neighborhood! This meant that we didn't get very far, but we did make a big impact. I could have brought a whole box of trash bags and filled them all. I wasn't fully prepared though, and only had one bag. We plan on picking up trash in the neighborhood on a regular basis now. Some nice neighborhood kids that we often converse with from time to time when they visit our chickens or in passing on walks warned us not to pick up any plastic bottles that we might see because there were some older kids in the neighborhood that liked to make home made bombs and toss them into peoples yards! Great. So we avoided plastic bottles and focused on everything else.
She found a beautiful live snail, living among the trash. Though she initially wanted to take it home, I explained why it wasn't a good idea. Instead, we would save it's life by cleaning up it's home and putting it back.
These bushes had so much trash hidden in them!
Cigarette butts were everywhere! Our neighborhood is in need of a major clean-up!
On a mission to save the world, one cigarette butt at a time
She HAD to get every tiny piece of garbage that sat on top of the storm drain. I began to try to talk her out of it and move on to just the bigger pieces of trash along the streets because there were tons and tons and tons of cigarette butts in there and it would take forever. But, in all reality, this was important. The storm drain drains directly into the river. Esperanza helped me realize that this was probably more important than the bigger pieces of trash. Funny how as adults we think we're the ones teaching kids when in reality we learn way more from them. She got every single tiny piece of plastic and butt out of the pile.
We made it to the community center park half a block form home where we took a break to play a little, and cleaned up more trash on the play ground.
When we got home the kids stripped down and ran through the sprinkler
Every day since then, she picks up trash wherever we might be. The wheels are turning it that little head of hers and she is determined to help make our planet a better place.
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