We need a new Earth Day
I did not get into my car last Saturday, Earth Day 2024 . Instead, I walked to and from Guido’s, our local market. It’s less than a mile and a half, and gave me a chance to explore the Mahaiwe Cemetery before being interviewed by a journalist in Istanbul about cemeteries as third places. (More on that subject to come!) I cooked a vegan meal. I did some gardening and read for a while by the pond where the frogs are out and the tadpoles are afloat.
On Sunday, I got in the car and drove to Hancock Shaker Village for their Baby Animals Day. The route is a beautiful one, through gentle rolling countryside. All along the way there were small bright yellow plastic bags sitting by the side of the road, the aftermath of Earth Day.
The bags were made of heavy plastic, and had been neatly tied. What on earth were they doing there, sitting along the roadside?
Back in 1971, after the first Earth Day, my father went out with plastic bags to clean up trash along the roads above the Silicon Valley. He was a computer guy with crewcut and pocket protector, no treehugger, but the notion of clean roads proved an acceptable form of environmentalism. It was like the Highway Beautification Act instigated by Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon Johnson. Pick up trash. Plant wildflowers.
All well and good, but in 2024 the planet is on fire. Earth Day should be about more than picking up trash - starting with climate change. The Earth Day organization must know this. They have many other initiatives. But even here in a liberal, educated part of the United States, people are simply filling plastic bags.
The system is absurd. Drive somewhere to pick up bags. Drive somewhere else to park and then walk along the road gathering rubbish. And unlike the Wombles, who at least put it in the bin, it seems that people are told to leave the bags along the road for someone else to collect.
Think of the inefficiency. Someone will have to drive along, getting out of the car each time to pick up a single small bag, when the Earth Day pickers-up could have taken the bags home in their cars and put them in their own trash.
And how about the plastic? I saw only one green “recycled trash” bag on the entire drive, suggesting that people couldn’t be bothered to separate as they walked, so everything went into the yellow bags destined for the landfill. This is hardly a contribution to the Earth Day initiative “End Plastics.”
We can do better! We need a new Earth Day plan.
Next up: Repair Cafes.
Home Ecology is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.