With the calendar and the weather aligning at last, piles of snow have become just an unpleasant memory.
But what they left behind are piles of trash that have been buried through the winter, as well as the latest beer cans and fast food wrappers tossed out the windows of passing vehicles – glaring visual reminders of just how lazy our fellow citizens can be.
One good thing about the snow – it masked most of that mess. Now it’s out there in all its ugliness.
April is the month for town clean-ups, and we encourage our readers to participate. There’s plenty of trash to go around – whether it lines the border between the street and your yard, or it’s down the road a bit. The weekend weather has been inviting, a good time to spruce up your street and bring back “curb appeal.”
What we see along our roads paints a picture that is far from pretty. It’s disheartening to realize how many people are throwing trash and garbage from their cars as they drive by. It’s scary when we realize that included in the unsightliness – not so infrequently – are syringes. And even sadder is the realization that much of what’s tossed could easily have been recycled.
We can instill in every family member the reminder that trash does not get thrown out the window. Keep a litter bag in the car, and empty it into your garbage or recycling when you get home. You wouldn’t take your garbage and dump it over the fence onto the next-door neighbor’s property, so why would you throw it onto the road that you pay taxes to maintain?
Londonderry has Roadside Pride and Beautify Londonderry campaigns. Other towns have specific spring clean-up days. Check with your town hall for details.
Wherever we live, we should expect our streets and lawns to be clean, not repositories for someone else’s garbage. And we should do our part to make sure they stay that way.
Whether you decide to join a formal, town-organized clean-up or you take it upon yourself to keep a portion of the road where you live or the land where you walk free of litter – or you do both – we urge everyone who’s physically able to make a commitment to keep their town looking its best throughout the year.
Taking care of the place we call home is not something we can do just one day a year. It’s a habit well worth developing.