Bay Weekly:
The Back Shall be First
Dear New Bay Times/Bay Weekly:
I like the Bay Weekly name, and how you introduce it. The back (page) shall be first.
—Eli Flam, Accokeek
Trashy Behavior
Dear New Bay Times/Bay Weekly:
This letter is to notify all of the tragic demise of a productive part of our small community, The Windy Hill Elementary Recycling Program.
This important program was started the same year that this new elementary school opened in Owings. Its first year was wildly successful, raising close to $1,000 for the PTA while teaching our youngsters the importance of being environmentally responsible citizens.
We first started having problems last year when some petty criminal type began stealing bags of crushed aluminum cans from our collection at the school. At this point, I need to remind you that discarded cans are worth about a penny apiece. Subse quent stake-outs by sheriff’s deputies yielded nothing.
After this, someone set fire to our newspaper collection bin. Most recently, in addition to more thefts, people have been dumping all manner of trash at the school rather than hauling it to the local drop-off sites.
If you drive the roads of Calvert County, you see the magnitude of the litter problem. People seem to think nothing of tossing their spent beer cans out of their car windows. As I walk my dog around the perimeter of the small town of North Beach, I can pick up two grocery bags full of cans and plastic bottles, daily. Last winter I conducted a one-man one-mile cleanup of Fifth Street, the road that leads into North Beach. The results of Tim Bintrim’s one-man one-mile clean-up of Fifth Street in North Beach, at right.
How can this situation be improved?
- Perhaps stricter enforcement of anti-litter laws?
- An anti-littering campaign by local publications or signs along our highways?
- Perhaps teaching our children to be responsible for the environment they will someday inherit?
That’s what our program was all about. We held Recycling Round-ups with incentives and rewards for kids who collected the most cans. Students scoured the streets for recyclables. They were cleaning up their community and learning there is true value in what unthinking individuals would casually toss aside.
Now that low-lives have ended this program, what lessons do you think the children have been taught?
—Tim R. Bintrim, North Beach
Copyright 2000
New Bay Times Weekly
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