I missed Earth Day this year. The celebrated one, even though I try to celebrate it every day.
Earth Day is celebrated on April 22 and humans everywhere are encouraged to clean up their piece of the planet. In the 1970s, when I was a college student, I “encouraged” a stranger to pick up some trash he had tossed out of his car while a 7-Eleven store trash bin sat mere feet away.
“Litterbug,” I yelled. He looked as though he couldn’t hear me, so I repeated myself. It wasn’t until he began to pull out of his parking space, right next to my car, and actually pointed a gun at me that I realized my big mouth had gotten me into trouble one more time.
I hit the floorboard of my VW and came away shaken yet unharmed. Since then I’ve zipped my lip and have simply cleaned up other peoples’ trash. I go for a walk, I pick up trash. I post a letter and see a gum wrapper on the ground, I pause for the few seconds it takes to stoop over, pick it up and drop it into a trash bin.
I keep thinking that my obsession with trash came from my mom, but I don’t think that’s the case. I got the love of birds and flowers from her, growing flowers and a gazillion other things but probably not trash, although there was never a speck of trash anywhere on our family’s property.
While I was in Sri Lanka from 2002 until 2016, I felt the need to celebrate Earth Day daily with a vengeance. When I arrived there, I didn’t have enough hands, let alone time to deal with the shocking amount of trash
Beyond the litter, the island was amazing with its ancient temples, turquoise sea, dramatic sunsets, wild elephants and the wonderful people. It was hard to imagine how such delightful people could have waged a decades long civil war. But everywhere they smiled at me; women toiling on the lush green hills of the tea plantations, men carrying giant bundles of rice or even furniture atop their heads, children alongside their mothers at roadside stands selling mangos and coconuts.
I took a chance on Sri Lanka friendliness, and once again “encouraged” someone to stop littering. I asked my tour driver, when I toured several temples, not to throw trash out the car window. I made him a litter bag and said, “Appa” (No) when he merely appeared to be thinking of tossing out a banana peel. (Was I the ugly American or merely someone who wanted to keep the planet clean?)
When I arrived at my final destination, a hotel four hours south of where I had landed, the resort was still in the construction phase. I was asked by the owner to help, in exchange for room and board. I fell in love with the place; the red earth of the nearby cliff, the brilliant blue sea, the coconut palms stretching toward the ocean, even though there was trash littering the landscape. I met Nandasiri, the lifeguard, on my first day and as he proudly showed me “his” Red Cliff Beach, I said, “If it’s your beach, then you must keep it clean.” Unable to understand me, I showed Nandasiri what I meant and we spent the afternoon picking up “kunukunu” (trash).
The next day, two workers were busy cleaning the beaches. Smiling Nandasiri dubbed me the leader of the Kunukunu Police! Two weeks later my squad had grown to four members; Sirisena, Kapila, Opuli and Das. A month later there wasn’t a scrap of kunukunu on the entire 15-acre property.
I took photos of all 200 workers at the hotel and printed them out, giving each worker their photo with my thanks for taking care of their slice of Mother Earth. It wasn’t easy to translate with my limited knowledge of their language, Sinhala, but they understood.
Even though we have signs along the roads and highways here that warn people they’ll receive a $1,000 fine for littering, people still litter. The other day while coming back from Santa Rosa, my friend Mabel, who was driving, stopped at a pullout on Highway 20. I had lost my phone in the car and it was ringing like crazy. So while I got out to look for it, I spied a McDonald’s food bag that someone had tossed from their vehicle. Automatically I walked over to it and picked it up, put it in Mabel’s car to throw in my garbage bin later. Simple. Easy peasy. Why can’t others do that? Why can’t others keep trash in their cars until they get home?
Don’t parents teach cleaning up after ones’ self? I know my mother tried to get me to clean my teenage room up, but I guess it’s not the same. Room, road, highway?
Along the Nice-Lucerne cutoff, there’s a sign that states the Aceves Crew cleans the cutoff for the next two miles. Before Covid, I signed up for his cleaning crew. Bags, trash pickers and orange vests were provided. It felt good to help and it didn’t take much effort. My neighbor and Mabel have filled large orange bags of trash several times a month. They clean the same area, over and over. It’s a revolving door of disregard; litterbugs just don’t seem to care, whether here in the U.S. or Sri Lanka.
What’s a girl to do? Encourage others to participate in keeping Mother Earth clean, be it on Earth Day, or any other day. Just don’t confront a gun-toting litterbug!
To sign up for the next Aceves Crew clean-up, call 707-349-6950.
Lucy Llewellyn Byard is currently a columnist for the Record-Bee. To contact her, email lucywgtd@gmail.co
