Jaci Dawn

Forty years ago, I stood with the student body of White Pine High School as we celebrated the very first Earth Day ever. I don’t remember what we did to celebrate (did we pick up trash? Or just hold some sort of meeting in the park?), but I know the  day was memorialized by a photo in our yearbook.

But that yearbook is buried in a closet and I am not going to spend Earth Day! digging it out, scanning it, and uploading it to my blog. So you just have to believe me that I remember the first Earth Day.

So what did I do to celebrate Earth Day on this 40th anniversary?

I took photos of trash.

Why? Because some people still do not “get” it.

If we could just get this under control.

I mean, what does it take to get people to understand they need to put their trash in a proper trash can? Or to dump their cigarette butts in a proper ash tray? How hard is it?

I really, really, really dislike litterbugs. And you see them everywhere: in the city, in the suburbs, and a thousand miles from nowhere, in the middle of the pristine desert or primeval woods. I’ve gone on some hikes where it took a lot of effort to get to where we were going and at the end, what did we find? Someone’s discarded beer can.

So here’s my Earth Day challenge: if you have something to throw away (and it can’t be recycled), try putting it into the right container for trash.

However, I want you to consider recycling it first.

Recycling can be fun and addicting. (Reused: dryer lint, wire, silk blouse, old curtains, silk leaves from some project, beads.)

Yep: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle still rings true. We can change the world if we’d just quit dropping our trash on the sidewalk.

Thank you.