Plastic free trails.

I think whatever we do in life is need based. Recently I found a need to preserve the beauty in nature that we have been blessed with and which all of us can enjoy. I have been going out for my jogs and walks along a beautiful trail behind my home, in Fremont, for several years now. This trail is built along a creek that flows through a good part of the county. I enjoy walking along, beneath the willows, and other trees that bloom magnificently during spring. Flanking the creek below, and growing on the borders are tall lush grasses that attract deer during sunset. I enjoy doing this ritual every day listening to my favorite music on FM, watching beautiful birds flying along, hummingbirds drinking nectar in the flowers, nature in all its beauty. Some times when I go in the evening I watch deer drinking water in the creek.

I watched a video a while back, showing the dangers of plastic and the havoc it can cause to our environment, and it has been bugging me ever since... At home, we do recycle plastic, paper, metal, clothes, electronics etc, but there is an equally bigger problem outside.

I notice that the trails are littered (at times accidentally) sporadically along the path sideways with plastic and glass bottles which are supposed to decompose in about 450-500 years. This is far beyond our and our kids’ lifetimes. These must have been getting cleaned up once in a while by the Parks and Trails administration. But still there is a lot that remains in the Trails, turning them ugly. There is one more aspect of this littering which makes it uglier both for the environment and the Trails. This is the dog excreta which is picked up by the owners in a plastic bag. Sometimes, some of the stuff in the plastic bags is left thrown on the trails, which makes it far worse. It is better off if the dog poop is left as it is, rather than be picked up in plastic and left in open on the sides of the Trail Roads. Left as it is, the excreta starts decomposing immediately and after some time (in a matter of days) is gone. But held in a plastic bag, it stays longer and given that the plastic bag is supposed to decompose in 10-20 years, it becomes a problem on the trails. Why do the dog owners do this – could be they are lazy, careless, or irresponsible. Or, the trash bin could be a long ways away. Maybe they are elderly and have just finished a long walk, and are not enthused to walk all the way back to the bin….I am not here to comment on why it is being done, but to do something about this nagging problem.

I thought I should act on my own about this, instead of lamenting about the situation we are in or about the people who are doing this. Every day I thought of picking up these pieces of plastic and glass bottles in a small bag on my way back home, and drop them off either in the Trash bins or in the Recycle Containers. Then I started implementing this idea in the last couple of weeks and have been picking up leftover stuff, which has not been a burden to my walks. I thought that, "I am able to do this where I live, but I cannot do this in all the other places where I do not get to go". “Why don't I share this simple idea in the blogosphere and see if there are other people who read this blog, and if this can catch on, it might lead to cleaner trails all over the US and may be all over the world!!!”, and the result is my new blog!

As a significant note, today, a fellow walker noticed what I was doing, and stopped to tell me that she would bring a bag along everyday to start picking up recyclables.