I took the city manager's one bag challenge!

 

VIDEO: City Manager Jeff Pomeranz introduces the 1-Bag Challenge (0:31)

I don't know how long this bag has been under my kitchen sink. It's been at least five years, during which time it has been taunting me: You care about your community? You call yourself an urbanist? Then why do I live under the sink--huh?!?!?!?! Yes, I am judged by the things under my sink.

The 1-Bag Challenge was made by Cedar Rapids City Manager Jeff Pomeranz several years ago. The idea was to encourage people to pick up litter around town. The full bags can be put out with the weekly trash, without counting against the one-cart limit. Individuals can go it alone, or as part of a group. My neighbor Brook picks up trash in nearby Bever Park as part of his regular walks. Last August he reported on Facebook:

Lila and I picked up 3 big ol bags of garbage from Blake Blvd, Bever Park, 34th street and Cottage Grove. We cleaned that area 2 weeks ago and already it's trashed. Seems like folks buy a plastic bottle filled with colored juice, take a sip and throw it out the window. Rinse and repeat. I don't get it. There's a lot I don't get. So I'm pledging to pick up a bag of trash with every CD I sell. I've got some catching up to do. It's a good workout bending over and hauling that bag up and down hills and trails. Hoping others will dig in and do a little bit of clean up too. Let's teach the kids a better way. Thanks for the support!

Faced with challenges from both the city manager and an award-winning rock musician, I could no longer ignore the call of duty. Responding was another matter. My uncle, Dwight Nesmith, described his entry into service during World War II:

He worked his way through one and a half years of business school before his country called him to duty. They called, and they called. And finally, 10 months after Pearl Harbor, he went. (from That Wasn't Very Much of an Introduction, released on RPC in 1963)

Today, as I responded to the call to a much briefer and less risky duty, was breezy and pleasant, a window of loveliness before it turns hot again. So, no time like the present! I spent considerable time overthinking where to work. Where would I find the right amount of trash? I didn't want to walk for hours and find maybe two ounces. Bever Park is Brook's turf, so surely clean as the proverbial whistle. I was hesitant to work in a residential neighborhood where I might be patronizing. The trails through town have some encampments, and I didn't want in my ignorance and privilege to pick up someone's belongings. I finally decided to walk along 16th Avenue, which runs behind the Geonetric building where I have my "summer office," across the river into Czech Village. 

I unfurled the bag, which turned out to contain a pair of gloves. Handy! and it saved me using the gardening gloves I'd brought. The bag seemed huge, though. 

In the yard outside the building I found my first item--a take out soft drink lid:

I spent quite some time on that lawn. There were scraps of paper, cigarette butts, a few bits of plastic. I started to get light-headed from all the bending over and standing up, yet I didn't have very much to show for it. I began to wish someone would throw me an alternator or something.

I moved through the vacant lots between here and the river. Marlboro seemed to be the cigarette brand of choice; Casey's the source of snack packages. There were a few but not many beverage cans. (Is Iowa's superannuated deposit law still effective?) There were a lot of those colored flag things that people use to mark gas lines and such, but all lying on the ground, obviously discarded. I picked them up; by the time I was finished, the sticks had started poking through the bottom of the bag.

At the edge of the bridge, in the shadow of the new flood wall and branding arch, I found a bucket of... what? Tossing it in would add to my haul in a hurry. But it looked somehow official, like someone was going to use it to do some work right there. Moral dilemma!

I left it. Once in Czech Village, I found what appeared to be the hand of a clock by the Kosek bandshell:

I didn't see a clock nearby from which it would have fallen, so I bagged it.

I stuck to litter, but I could have gone for weeds instead. There were a lot of these guys: 

I never saw them before the derecho, and now they're everywhere. If you're from South Dakota, perhaps you know what they are?

As I moved along, and got more tired, my standards for what to pick up kept going up. 16th Avenue, the principal street of Czech Village, is, as it turns out, chock full of cigarette butts. How many cigarette butts would it take to fill this huge bag? Someone needs to bring a big vacuum. I stopped grabbing butts, and the size of paper for which I would deign to stoop kept getting larger. I started going faster, and eventually reached my turn-around point, where 16th and 12th Avenues meet. (Cedar Rapids geography is weird.)

This picture was supposed to include the bag, but apparently
that's a bag too far for this photographer

A guy walking his dog thanked me for what I was doing. He told me he lives on the other side of I-380 and picks up litter under the bridge. There's so much that he fills the city manager's bag and another of his own. He's ready for the 2-Bag Challenge!

I walked back along the other side of 16th Avenue. I found someone's Medical Assistance Eligibility Card. (Is this something important? I messaged them on Facebook anyhow. They didn't need it, so I shredded it.) Near Czech Town Station, I worked around a guy talking on the phone in an African language. 

Then when I crossed A Street, just before the bridge, I found the mother lode. Good! because I now had a respectable load in my bag. Bad! because why was there so much trash? Was it workers, or trail users, or both? All that litter sent the unmistakable message that this is not a place worth caring about. But it is! Isn't it?

On the south side of the bridge, I found two fish hooks. Yikes! By the time I got back to the parking lot, I was tired, and ready for lunch. 

I don't know what I learned from taking the challenge, other than what I already knew: we live in a disposable society. Litter gets to the ground a lot of ways, probably equal parts inadvertence and malice, with most of it there through carelessness. Whatever I did for the community today, I feel less a sense of accomplishment than I did a couple weeks ago when I did a few hours' semi-competent work on a house for Habitat for Humanity. The house will last, I hope, for many years. The clean up will last only until the next person loses a wrapper out their car window, or empties their ashtray on 16th Avenue.

That's kind of a discouraging note to end on, but I've been feeling kind of discouraged lately about the whole notion of common life on which this blog is based. We have a collective destiny, I'm more convinced than ever, but the fewer people believe it, the more that destiny is going to be painful.

My bag.
I put it under the car while I went back to work...
just in case!

Interior of my bag,
for any of you youngsters who are into garbology

CLEAN UP CR SITE: https://www.cedar-rapids.org/residents/utilities/clean_up_cr.php

SEE ALSO: "Oh Hell," Before Holy Mountain (written April 25, 2012) [towards a theology of littering?]