Confluence Trash Bash Rehash

Nothing could have been more apropos for yesterday’s Fifth Annual Confluence Trash Bash than the 100% recycled bags that were available to some 200 volunteers after the event.  The sides of the Missouri American Water items were decorated with a few hundred colorful plastic bottles.   Simply stated on the very bottom of the bag’s front was “I Used To Be a Plastic Bottle.”

The event was held in or near four different sites in the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan Area.  I chose Creve Coeur Park because I not only grew up nearby, but also because it’s a place I frequent several dozen times every single year. 

My mom used to come to Creve Coeur Park in the 1950s by streetcar.  It’s a historical fact that is documented in a shelter next to the playground in the upper part of Creve Coeur Park. That’s reached by going west on Dorsett Road and turning right into the park prior to reaching Marine Avenue.  It can also be reached by walking up some 300 steps from the parking lot to your right while coming down the hill on Marine from Dorsett Road.

I’m thrilled that I signed up for Station Two, which was the vast area down by Mallard Lake behind The Lakehouse Grill.  After turning in my signed liability waiver at Sailboat Cove, I was equipped with gardening gloves and several bags by the event organizers.  I headed straight behind the eating site and to the right.

What a total eye-opening experience it was on the appalling side!  In the first 20 minutes alone, I found enough plastic bottles, cans, glass containers, Styrofoam cups and parts of broken cooler pieces, plastics, pens, and some five or six different types of balls to fill six trash bags about a foot wide and 2 ½ feet high.  As one of some two dozen or so volunteers working that area, I filled another five or six bags over the next couple hours! 

So many shocking stories of finds were shared with many others during the cleanup process.  They included a large, round laundry basket, a huge bag that we were told was used to hold sand for sandbagging, and a very tall, ornate light bulb.  It was also announced at the end that some 1,065 bags of trash were collected along with hundreds of tires from a nearby dump site.

I have visited many areas of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers plus tributaries and creeks that flowed from those waterways.   One could often find a smattering of trash that might have been deposited there by the current from hundreds of miles away.  But that’s not the case at freestanding Creve Coeur Lake and its small water offshoots.  

Why would people not bring plastic grocery bags or the like to collect their trash then load them back into their vehicles or deposit them into metal drums close to the long, walking trail?

That was part of my response to new friend Caitlin Zera, a Webster University photo journalism/media major.  I spent a good amount of time collecting trash with her and her father. 

Zera was also taking a good variety of photos along the trash-lined shores before interviewing me as a former journalism student during our barbecue lunch to help complete her school project.

It was different for me being on the receiving end of interview questions, but the answers came easy.  I told her that although I was surprised that so many people would just leave their containers and other items, it pretty much fits into other areas of our throwaway society.  Just consider all the neglect in other areas of our society and how poorly some people treat others and their own pets.

Our environment, including the water sheds are too precious for us to spoil with trash, runoff from pesticides, and the like.  Constant education is one of the solutions, and I will be sure to continue to spread the word on the subject and volunteer again next year!

The other major meeting sites for this year’s event were St. Ferdinand Park in Florissant, the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge area off Riverview Drive in Bellefontaine Neighbors and the Choteau Township area of Granite City, Illinois.

Trailnet, Great Rivers Greenway, Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, St. Louis Audubon Society, and the Missouri Department of Conservation were also among several sponsors of the event. 

Free Missouri Stream Team t-shirts were also distributed to volunteers.  That’s pretty much the intent of the project—to help keep Missouri water areas FREE of trash by pushing a greater STREAM of consciousness into the minds of our residents in the realm of clean water.