As I briefly discussed in another blog post, I had the opportunity to organize weekly litter sweeps for a month during my internship with the Office of Sustainability. While working with the 71% Project, which researches and combats plastic pollution in the oceans, I facilitated four hour-long litter sweeps on the corner of Calhoun and Coming Streets by the library. The 71% Project focuses on this area because this intersection was adopted by the Office of Sustainability, and its proximity to campus equates to most of the trash in the area being discarded by students.
Volunteers during these litter sweeps included students from various organizations across campus, ranging from interns from the Office of Sustainability, members of Alliance for Planet Earth, and students from this class. Thank you to anyone reading this who helped during these litter sweeps–they could not have occurred without you!
We began each litter sweep by meeting at the Office of Sustainability before walking to the intersection to begin picking up the litter. As we collected trash, at least one person recorded the type of trash and quantity on their phone through the SC Aquarium Citizen Science app. Using this app is not only helpful to the aquarium and their research, but it is also useful for the 71% Project to record its progress in litter sweeps throughout the semester.
As the area where we collected trash was off campus, it was not surprising that the items collected in the most abundance were cigarette butts. In addition, we always found many aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic cups, and pieces of paper lying on the sidewalk and in the bushes. Although there was a trash can located on the street corner, it was obvious that, while some of the trash might have blown out of it, most of the litter was thrown out of cars or disposed of after sitting on the concrete wall behind the bushes.
It was very disheartening to see hundreds of pieces of trash collected from the same area week after week, especially as much of the litter was located next to storm drains which lead directly to the harbor. However, a little less litter was found and collected each week, which displayed that the litter sweeps were effective, and many people stopped to ask us what we were doing during every litter sweep. Hopefully, seeing students collecting litter will inspire people to not litter themselves, use less single-use items, or pick up a piece of trash in the street.
Organizing and participating in these litter sweeps every week really exposed me to the environmental aspect of sustainability that I am interested in: plastic pollution. After taking this class, I no longer focus only on the usage and littering of the single-use plastic items, but the process of extracting resources, creating the plastic, shipping it, filling it with a product, and selling it. As we have discussed, waste is a product of our linear economy because waste does not exist in nature, and this has really expanded my thinking about plastic pollution. While I believe that individual action and change is important and can have an impact, the only way we will be able to significantly reduce single-use plastic is by demanding better from corporations and policies within the government.
