Picking up Litter in Parks

I work for a park with over 8,000 acres of protected open space in a small valley between two larger cities. This park has a lake with miles of sandy beaches and several miles of hiking trails. Park visitors can camp, boat, picnic, swim, paint, or hike.

I’ve worked in five different parks, and have spent most of my life working outside. One of the job duties I’ve done the most consistently is pick up litter. At a small park in Southeastern Utah, I would walk a nature trail and an overlook trail almost daily and I never came back empty-handed. While picking up litter, I wore leather gloves and carried a five-gallon bucket.

The view never got old. Photo taken by the author.

I walked through the campground on my cleaning shifts and I developed a routine that I still use almost fifteen years later. On my first loop through the campground, I picked up litter, including the trash that people threw in the fire pits instead of finding a trash can or dumpster. Then I emptied the fire pits and charcoal grills before finally sweeping sand off the concrete pad and wiping down each picnic table.

Occasionally I would have to clean up a campsite after a raven got into the campers’ food supply. People love using those white styrofoam coolers because they are cheap and light. Ravens also love those white styrofoam coolers because they are easy to rip apart to get to the food inside! The desert wind can carry…