We don’t have quite enough going on over here at Kindness Activist (insert sarcastic tone here…) – so we STARTED ANOTHER PROJECT!
We adopted some streets in
our county!!
I have always liked seeing
the “This stretch of interstate adopted by…” signs and wondered how the
programs worked. I recently decided to
stop wondering and start doing!
First, I put out a call for
CREW MEMBERS. I was hoping to get a
dozen – we got 17! And that is perfect,
because there will always be times when some people have conflicts and can’t
attend.
Then, we filled out all of
the paperwork. Doing that opened up the
online map so that we could see which streets had not yet been adopted and… drum roll…
basically the “adopt a street” program in Arlington County is so
underutilized and probably unknown that not a single street around us was
adopted. That is sad in that it means no
one is “taking care of them”, but it was good in that we could choose whatever
street we wanted!
I had a couple of criteria
in mind. I wanted a street:
-
Near our house so
that we could use our home as a meeting place for all volunteers
-
In a busy area so
that it would likely need some cleaning
-
Close enough to
walk to
It was easy to find a street meeting those requirements. In fact, it was so easy that instead of adopting ONE street, we adopted THREE! We chose streets around Sequoia Plaza, a busy office complex down the street. Here is the map – the blue/purple streets are ours:
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| The street we adopted |
12 kind volunteers set out
to see what this “Adopt a Street” was all about. We had buckets on loan from the county and
plenty of “grabbers” and gloves.
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| The inaugural Kindness Activist Street Cleaning Crew! |
We weren’t sure what to expect. When you are in a car driving through that area, the streets look pretty clean. (Shhh, one volunteer messaged me threatening to go drop some litter around there so that we would have something to pick up, because we were afraid it would be a bust! Don’t worry, she didn’t do it 😊 .)
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| Finding bottles behind bushes |
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| Wait, did you find a plastic bag? |
But we quickly learned
that even though it may look trash free when looking out your car window, when
you are on foot and actually LOOKING for litter, there is a loooot to be found.
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| Clean-up in action! |
We found bottles. We found
cans. We found strips of rubber and chewed
gum and wrappers. We found a box. We found yard signs. We found a hub cap. We found broken glass. But what we found the
MOST of by far was CIGARETTE BUTTS.
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| This was just ONE area with lots and lots of cigarette butts, and this is AFTER we had picked some of them up already! |
They are disgusting, and
they were everywhere!! You could definitely
tell where the workers from the Sequoia Buildings come out on their smoke
breaks ☹ . So that is one thing I will be including in
our report: there need to be cigarette butt receptacles at every entry to the
offices and at the bus stop.
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| These two worked really hard |
The dozen of us worked for
about 90 minutes and we got a lot done!!
And do you know what? It felt good. I mean, not only was it a lovely sunny day to
be outdoors, but bending down and picking up trash felt like a very tangible
way to give back to the community. We were
literally making the space cleaner and prettier! I was very proud of us!!
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| This little buddy worked all day yesterday perfecting his grabber tool technique! |
We found a couple of
special things while we were out. Well, I
say “we” found them, but really one little helper did. She seemed to find all of the weird
stuff! First she found a set of keys in
a bush. Then she found a lottery card
(not a winner, drat). And then
she found the best thing of all – a wallet!!!
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| The finder of all of the weird things and her mother |
The wallet was very clean
and looked new, so it didn’t feel like it had been out there long. There was no cash in it but the driver’s
license, credit cards, and insurance card were still there. When I got home, I posted in a large
community Facebook group to try and find the owner. We had his name, knew his age, and had his
address (I just listed his name and age in the post, and said we had found
something important of his).
Before long I got a
Facebook message. A woman had tracked
the man whose wallet we had down and gave me his address (which matched what
was on the license) and his phone number.
We called him and wow, was he happy!!!
Turns out he moved recently and lives near us so he jumped in his car to
come retrieve the wallet. He asked what
he could give as a reward for finding it and I told him no reward was needed,
we were just happy to find the owner.
He came to get the wallet
and is so sweet. He explained that his
wallet was stolen just today right out of his bag at a local 7-11. The thief must’ve grabbed it, saw that it had
no cash, and threw it. We told him that
a little girl had found it, and he was very grateful. He even gifted her some sweet pajamas from
the Washington Wizard’s basketball team.
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| Jon, reunited with his wallet |
And here is a cool part,
too. He wants to join the street
cleaning crew!! We are technically full,
but hey, I think we should make an exception and add him to the list, don’t you? We gave him our social media links and the
website info and he texted to say, “I appreciate the mission your group has and
it is a blessing for me.” Hey Jon, we
are adding you to our list of volunteers, so get ready!
All in all, it was a very
fun project. In fact, David found it so fun
that after we had come home, had a snack, and sorted out the recycling from
what we picked up, he went BACK and cleaned up some more on a street we hadn’t
even adopted. He had noticed some
garbage in a retention pond area and wanted to tidy it up. He even picked up a CAR BUMPER (add that to
the list of odd items we found…).
First round of cleaning –
done! We will be back in a couple of
months for round two. Until then –
PLEASE DON’T LITTER!! Be kind to Mother
Earth!
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| David in action |
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| So much to pick up |
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| Just SOME of the garbage we cleaned up |
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| John was quite happy to pick up the loaned buckets from the county |
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