My stint as a sanitation technician

A Surfrider event next weekend prompted G and me to go down to Georgetown on Saturday, intent on picking plastic water bottles out of the trash. The largest 10K in DC was being held along the waterfront, so it seemed logical that we could get the 250 bottles needed for this exhibit from the 10,000 or so that were being distributed.

I just saddled up next to a trash can and started digging, bare-handed. I was sweating buckets from the heat and humidity anyway. The race had only started about 50 minutes prior, so the the picking was slow. As we moved from can to can, we filled one bag with only 50 bottles, and I'd only brought three bags, so we'd end up about 100 short. So I swiped a big extra bag that had been tied to a trash can. Resourcefulness. ;) Then we found a box of rubber gloves! Even better.

As we continued our work, digging through cans, navigating around the throngs of sweaty people, watching the medical cart go by with another victim of heat exhaustion, strange things began to happen. Encouraging encounters. People would bring their bottles up to us and put them in our bags instead of the trash. They'd thank us for recycling. One woman even preached the benefits of a bottle deposit.

Only a couple of people threw trash in our bags. And likewise, only a very few people put bottles in the trash can when we were working next to it.

In the end, it only took us 20 minutes to collect the bottles. The big extra bag held more than 100, so we got what we needed. A bit of a pain to carry home, but it's done. It was kinda hard to walk away, knowing how many other bottles were just destined for the landfill, and how willing people were to help if just given the chance.

I now firmly believe that races should have recycling receptacles, and that people will use them wisely. Fewer than 20 percent of the 60 billion plastic bottles Americans use annually are recycled. Races use a HUGE number of bottles. (There must be a way around that, too. I acknowledge that most people are not willing to carry a reusable bottle like I am, and reducing the support is dangerous.)

DC Surfrider is participating in a 10K next month that purports to be "green." I'm curious what exactly the planners are going to do differently.

Photo via Creative Commons, by Trinitas on Flickr.