World Cleanup Day - Raritan River, NJ - Part I

neabponch (52)in #photography • 6 years ago (edited)

Prepare your eyes, this may sting a little. I walk a trail along the Raritan River in NJ with my sandbag and earbuds when I want a nice fat-burning exercise. I look to my right, and what seems like the remnants of a hobo village stain the picturesque greenery. I look to my left, and a fallen tree over the river has created a garbage dam of all the crap that has been floating downstream for months. I don't see the garbage when I look at each piece of litter, I see the person who was inconsiderate enough to leave it there in the first place. Someone who values convenience over preservation of their environment. The following pictures were taken before my friend and I went ahead and cleaned up as much as we possibly could on the hottest day in August.

Staring back at me all smug like.

Found the rest of the Wendy’s meal.

The amount of water bottles was staggering.

Pieces of fishing equipment were also found near the water.

I have not seen a Pepsi can like this for more than a decade, some of these pieces of garbage must have been here for a long time.

Littered cock ring.

Nature trying to hide our shame.

This must have been someone’s living quarters for a while. It’s simply impractical to hike your garbage half a mile just to randomly dump it in the woods.

Hey bro, watch me crush this tall can on my head and chuck it in the forest. MURICA.

This bottle was completely full.

I didn’t expect to find multiple basketballs. The foam looks like it was hardened from a cheap mattress.

I…have no words. My working hypothesis is that a HUGE gust of wind took this from the backyard of one of the houses across the river and landed it here.

It’s like the river threw up.

More basketballs!

The sludge actually created its own ecosystem with little toads and snakes. When we fished out the garbage some of them were getting caught in the net :<

We didn’t take any pictures of the clean up, but my friend made a gif of me scooping crap out of the river with my pool skimmer. Just this one portion took about 90 minutes.

Bottle of car oil? They do sometimes bring maintenance equipment to cut down trees or add to/flatten the trail, but I couldn’t imagine the workers being that irresponsible. Alternatively, hobo science experiments? Somewhere in the woods is a DeLorean that will never make it to 88 mph, RIP.

Angry floss user breaks floss in angry attempt to floss angrily and takes frustration out on Earth.

These bunches of scrap metal were scattered along one stretch of the trail. Unfortunately, they were way too heavy and deep into the trail to manually clean up.

Not litter, but basically how I felt taking these shots.

A bike handlebar rubber grip, these aren’t even easy to remove. Maybe this was all part of an art exhibit I wasn’t aware of.

We can file this under visual littering. Goze, you’re a bitch.

Some fishing line waiting to become a turtle noose.

We ended up running out of trash bags, apparently 12 wasn’t enough, but we got about 80% of the crap we saw.

Props to my friend, Dolly, from Chicago who was skeeved the fuck out at half the things she touched (even with gloves) but powered through it on a miserably hot day to git r dun. You can follow her on twitter if you’re into that kind of thing @daLittleA.

A side note was the amount of people who said 'Thank You' as they passed by. I hate to say but it's fairly meaningless to me, I'd much rather they pick up a bag and help. But maybe they'll tell their kids about it or something and inspire them to take action.

Thanks for stopping by!

Part II is here and showcases the results of our ongoing efforts.