This year my company sponsored a volunteer group, paid the registration fees and encouraged everyone to spend the day giving back to the city. I should probably also mention that they offered an extra PTO day to all volunteers...lil extra sign-up incentive.
And since I happen to be short a few PTO days for the year, this was all I needed to hear before signing myself right up for a day-o-caring! Well, this and quick email correspondence with a few co-workers who also decided it would be a lovely way to spend the Saturday with substantial reward - the giving back of course, never would I suggest that an extra PTO day was motivation for volunteering...never.
So very early last Saturday morning I met Jamie on the UWS and we set out on our NY Cares adventure. A few things we did not consider as we began our day-of-good-doing. (a) We did not have the faintest idea who Pixie, our team leader, actually was. (b) Nor did we know anyone else from our agency who was riding the bus out to Queens. (c) The craziness that we were actually getting ourselves into.
Good news though, being the friendly gals that we are, we ended up chatting with the girls sitting across from us on the bus, one of whom was the aforementioned Pixie. By 9:30am, team leader, check. Volunteer t-shirt, check. Throwback old yellow school bus - with seatbelts, check. Bright, sunny, warm springy forecast for the day, check check!
Our service site was Little Bay Park in Queens. Don't ask me where said park is in relation to Manhattan, I have no idea. I do know that it is on the bay of the Long Island Sound. Do with that what you will. Our charge was to rid the park of debris that has accumulated along the rocky edges of the bay. So armed with our "grabbers," gloves and trash bags we headed towards the water.
First thoughts - How hard can this be? We have grabbers, we don't even have to bend down to pick anything up. We have gloves. We have trash bags. Easy. And we can break for lunch at 1pm. And it's so sunny and warm, what a perfect day to be outside. Great, go!
Second thoughts - Um, this is a lot of trash. Ew. Don't fall! What's the point of this grabber anyway? This stuff has been here so long it's practically part of the earth! Every time I think I've got it all, I uncover more. Gross. Who leaves THIS?! What time is it now? Only 11am? Yikes...
Right, just to clarify, NOT easy work people. By Noon we were hurting. Sore arms, blistered hands, heavy trash bags. In order to pass the time, we decided to take inventory on the strangest trash items we had picked up. A catalog of sorts that detailed our findings.
Trash items discarded at Little Bay Park include, but are not limited to the following:
- Countless glass bottles - beer, liquor, iced tea
- Plastic bags
- A tire
- Blackberry battery
- Feminine products (really ladies? on the rocks at the park? sick.)
- Plastic bottles
- A syringe
- One tennis shoe
- Permanent marker
- What we are fairly certain was a diaper
- Rope
- Chicken wire
- A hula hoop
- Aluminum foil
- Tin pan
- Arm + cupholder from a lounge chair
- An assortment of bottle caps, cigarette butts and other random small things that are impossible to pick up
In another biazzare twist, at the end of our shift, the park director decided that we should take a tour of Fort Totten, the recently closed Army base right next to Little Bay Park. Huh? Why was this a part of NY Cares day? No clue. But we went. And saw the Magazine and the Battery that overlooked the water. Hey, at least we weren't cleaning up trash?
In conclusion...Think twice before you throw your trash on the ground. It's gross. It takes people a long time to clean it up and even so, they'll never get it all.
Dear New York,
I volunteered. I filled at least 6 giant trash bags. I'm scraped up. I'm sunburned. I toured Ft. Totten. Clearly I care.
xoxo,
LJ
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