In my first post I mentioned something about the junk that characterized this place in the fall of 2002 when I first began coming here, shortly after the state purchased it.
If you haven't been involved in a lot of cleanups of environmental land, especially on unfenced, absentee-owner sites, you have no idea what is involved.
I classify the trash into seven basic groups--rubber, wood, plastic, paper, metal, glass and fabric.
Rubber would be the tires, though sometimes it's rubber and metal because tires are still on the rims. They would also be the matresses, which are rubber and wood and metal, depending on their age or construction. Same goes for car seats. I don't mean child seats, I mean the front or back seat of an actual car.
Wood could be anything from railroad ties to fence posts to discarded construction debris. I have salvaged some of that to make benches, which I have put in shaded locations where I can rest and enjoy a view now free of junk.
Plastic debris plagues the world. Like glass, it is as likely to be in one piece as in a hundred. Beverage containers the remains of small appliances, toys, buckets and the list goes on. I almost forgot partially decomposed plastic bags, some of which will remain to contaminate the ecosystem, thanks to wonders of chemistry.
Paper is sometimes inside the plastic if the soil moisture or insects haven't done their work. That's the least of my concerns. I did find a $5 bill once, which is paper of a different sort and one I don't mind.
Metal can be a challenge because it weighs more than some of the other materials and sometimes comes in large pieces. Perhaps my biggest challenge was to break apart a pickup truck bed into small enough pieces to haul it from the most distant edge of the preserve to a collection site. I segregated the iron for one cleanup. It came to slightly more than 3,000 pounds--a ton and a half! That metal was recycled and most of the metal I've been collecting is being recycled, too. In the early days only the copper and aluminum was going that way, but the ferrous market is attractive enough to make it worth hauling. It saves space in the landfill, too.
Glass debris is made up primarily of bottles, jars and jalousie window slats. The largest concentration was a former homeless camp on the south tract. I must have hauled out six or eight large plastic bags of beer bottles.
Cloth is a bigger part than you might think. There are always carpets, but there is an unbelievable amount of discarded clothing.
If you haven't been involved in a lot of cleanups of environmental land, especially on unfenced, absentee-owner sites, you have no idea what is involved.
I classify the trash into seven basic groups--rubber, wood, plastic, paper, metal, glass and fabric.
Rubber would be the tires, though sometimes it's rubber and metal because tires are still on the rims. They would also be the matresses, which are rubber and wood and metal, depending on their age or construction. Same goes for car seats. I don't mean child seats, I mean the front or back seat of an actual car.
Wood could be anything from railroad ties to fence posts to discarded construction debris. I have salvaged some of that to make benches, which I have put in shaded locations where I can rest and enjoy a view now free of junk.
Plastic debris plagues the world. Like glass, it is as likely to be in one piece as in a hundred. Beverage containers the remains of small appliances, toys, buckets and the list goes on. I almost forgot partially decomposed plastic bags, some of which will remain to contaminate the ecosystem, thanks to wonders of chemistry.
Paper is sometimes inside the plastic if the soil moisture or insects haven't done their work. That's the least of my concerns. I did find a $5 bill once, which is paper of a different sort and one I don't mind.
Metal can be a challenge because it weighs more than some of the other materials and sometimes comes in large pieces. Perhaps my biggest challenge was to break apart a pickup truck bed into small enough pieces to haul it from the most distant edge of the preserve to a collection site. I segregated the iron for one cleanup. It came to slightly more than 3,000 pounds--a ton and a half! That metal was recycled and most of the metal I've been collecting is being recycled, too. In the early days only the copper and aluminum was going that way, but the ferrous market is attractive enough to make it worth hauling. It saves space in the landfill, too.
Glass debris is made up primarily of bottles, jars and jalousie window slats. The largest concentration was a former homeless camp on the south tract. I must have hauled out six or eight large plastic bags of beer bottles.
Cloth is a bigger part than you might think. There are always carpets, but there is an unbelievable amount of discarded clothing.
If anything were ever to disabuse someone of littering, spending a hundred hours picking up, carrying, digging out and piling up tons of trash would do it.
