Clean Your Mile: Weston Annual Town clean-Up is in April
For the fourth year, town residents are taking to the streets, trails and other public spaces (as well as their own road frontage) to clean up the trash. A brainchild of the Sustainable Weston Action Group, the townwide clean-up project is scheduled for April 11-18 though residents are encouraged to start early and keep cleaning up all through the year.
Past years have seen groups challenge each other and come together for a clean-up day: neighborhood by neighborhood, or one sports team aganst another. With the current pandemic restriction, the clean-up in 2020 and now in 2021 has become more individual and family-led.
One of the best parts of the Annual Town Clean-Up is that it is self-motivated and self-directed. There’s no need to ask anyone where to find trash–it is, quite literally, everywhere.
“There’s a place on Concord near Burchard Park where I would see trash all the time on the way to my [baseball] game,” said an eighth grader. “When we stopped to pick it all up, we filled two huge trash bags with Twisted Tea cans and other garbage.”
In 2020, Tack Chace posted on the Annual Town Cleanup FB page: “I saw a glint from some object about 60 yards into the woods. That led to two full bags, one of bottles and one of metal. I guess they had been there a long, long time. Recycled a lot of it. The case of beer cans – this year the drinkers kindly put the whole case in a trash bag so it’s easier to get out of the woods. Recycled all of it.”
Katharina Wilkins, the spark behind the Town Clean-Up, said “People don’t believe me when I say to just look at the sides of their very own streets. Invariably they go out, and then I get a note that says ‘OMG! There was so much trash!'”
Picking up trash has the obvious short-term benefits, and some longer-term ones as well. “I find that a lot of the young participants walk away with quite the self-righteous sense of indignation–and are so prepared to get down and dirty,” says Wilkins. “I feel good that the Town Clean-Up can give them an action item to do something so tangible.”
Participants are encouraged to share photos on the Facebook page for the Annual Town-Cleanup. Theories on which side of town prefers one beer or another when throwing cans out the car window are always tossed about as well. If every resident grabs a trash bag and heads out, imagine how much cleaner Weston will be.
Weston Annual Town Clean-Up April 11-18, 2021
Hi Kristin, I’m a new subscriber and really enjoy reading the Owl. Sometimes I’ve looked at the Swellesley Report and often thought we need a newsletter for Weston. Especially true for dinosaurs like me who don’t have FB accounts and therefore miss all the posts on WFB. Although I understand that has become a bit toxic of late.
As for the clean up, I can tell you we are always amazed, or should I say disgusted at how much trash we find along Church St. Every week I pick up Dunkin Donut bags, nips, cigarette buts etc. often in the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the road. Your story is a much more effective and engaging way to enlist participation than the typical town wide notice.
I look forward to the next issue of the Owl.
John
________________________________
I know what you mean on Church Street. I once netted a whole Adirondack chair there which is pretty amazing. Mostly it’s a lot of nips in the woods by KG station.