Helping clean up the environment can be a daunting idea. There’s so much to do and a lot of ground to cover. Sometimes the best place to start is right at home, in your town or city. It’s not as overwhelming and you don’t have to travel very far.
Some schools take donations of supplies like empty soda bottles, paper plates, and brown paper bags (the Trader Joe’s bags are highly prized by a summer science program in my neighborhood). Find out if there’s a local school that takes donations of these kinds of items. They’ll get reused for a child’s education and stay out of a landfill.
Keep an eye on events in your community, particularly announcements at your community center. There may be an event like tree planting or litter clean up in the park. If there are no such events, you can go through the channels and suggest one of these or a similar event yourself.
If you have a yard and/or a driveway, be sure to keep it clean to keep things from being swept into the sewer or carried away by animals. Check your front yard or even doorstep for newspapers, cans, cigarettes, or other things that were carelessly tossed away and dispose of them properly. Of course you didn’t create the mess, but it will certainly be a big help to the environment to pick it up. Also keep fallen leaves and sticks under control, as those are a huge fire hazard.
These may not seem like they’ll make a big difference, but in the grand scheme of things, they will. If we all do even just one little thing everyday, we can keep our communities clean and our land thriving.