A discarded H&M paper shopping bag was packed tight with plastic bottles, cans and scraps of trash at the end of my meandering walk from the School 33 Art Center to Federal Hill and back on Monday. Over a dozen other like-minded SoBo residents fanned out across the peninsula on their own routes to help clean up the neighborhood on the National Day of Service, Jan. 18, honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.
Although my own haul was by no means major, the collective efforts of so many neighbors certainly made a difference. The Peninsula Post encouraged residents via Facebook to take part in some community service with the SoBo Cleanup for National Day of Service.
Melissa Evans and her daughter collected a full trash bag walking in their neighborhood along Henry St. and E. Fort and Riverside avenues. “Definitely not as much trash as I was expecting,” Melissa reported.
Key Highway was a more productive target, according to Rebecca Sage Heiliczer. “Just picked up four bags of trash on Key Highway!” she wrote on Facebook. “Side benefit is less junk for my dog to try to eat on our walk later.”
“I can report that at least one block of W. Henrietta is looking better today,” wrote Jim Glick after his cleanup. “My trusty Dollar Store grabber and I picked up trash and recyclables.” (Jim notes: the “grabber” costs just one dollar.)
For Jim Peterson and Fina Santa-Maria, their planned trash walk never got farther than their own block of William St. “We didn’t get very far,” Fina wrote. “We started clearing the grate at the corner and the gutter and filled three trash bags!”
Garbage around the trash cans in Riverside Park was Mary Braman’s target for the day. “I make a habit of picking up dog bags near the trash cans, and today I decided to open up the iron containers and clean out the bottoms,” Mary wrote. Mary discovered that many of the cans had holes in them, which could explain why some of the trash ends up on the ground. – Steve Cole
South Baltimore Peninsula Post 