Pick up your own garbage

What can a high school student buy for $100 these days? A stereo? A few CDs? Starting next week, hundreds of Valley volunteers will be out patrolling the waterways, streets and woods in search of trash, in an attempt to clean up every corner of the huge area. What a shame that we even have to do it in the first place.

The clean-up efforts should be applauded, and the volunteers thanked for their willingness to chip in and do the dirty work, in a literal sense.

Without those volunteers, the entire Valley would start resembling the Mat-Su Borough Central Landfill. For the most part, all of these clean-up days would not even be needed if people were more responsible with their trash in the first place.

How many times have you been driving down the road and seen a cigarette butt or a piece of paper flying out of a vehicle in front of you? Or a ratty cardboard box falling out of a passing pick-up truck? The sheer volume of garbage along Valley roads is simply astounding. You cannot go five minutes without seeing litter.

All of this garbage is preventable. There would not be a need for people to volunteer their time on weekends if people were not ignorant in the first place. It takes all of five minutes to put your garbage in the back seat, and then throw it out when you get home, which keeps the Valley clean. Instead, people seem to think the ditches are nothing more than large, unlined garbage bins.

Earlier this spring, some moron dumped entire bags of garbage up at Hatcher Pass. Thankfully, that is the exception, rather than the norm. But when one person going 65 mph throws a single fast-food wrapper out the window, and then another person chucks a piece of paper out the window, it adds up to the same result.

It does not take long to dirty the landscape and create eyesores around our beautiful Valley. Piece by piece, we are doing a fine job of it right now, and that has to stop.

The outdoors is a big reason a lot of people call the Valley home. But when the Valley starts looking like a landfill, it hurts everyone here not just those who love the outdoors.

Be responsible with your garbage throw it out at home or at work, and make sure your load is covered when driving a truck. We should not have to rely on volunteers to clean up everyone elses trash every single spring, year after year.

Casey Ressler (ressler@alaska.net) is the Frontiersmans Valley Life editor.