86IT+and+Big+Sweep+Cleanup

On Saturday October 28, 2017 I went to the 86IT/Big Sweep Cleanup at Walnut Creek Wetlands. The event was to clean up trash, recycling and other various items throughout a beautiful creek. The organizers split us up into groups of 4 and sent us to various locations around the creek. My group went through the Walnut Creek Trail, (as shown in the picture to the right) which hit the least muddy and water filled areas. Although I would definitely recommend wearing boots because to get some of the trash we had to go into shallow water and muddy areas. In each group there were people who carried the black bags, which collected trash, and the white bags, which collected recycling. There was also buckets for glass, our group had two and used one bucket for cool findings and the other for glass. We found a lot of obscure items on the trail; from tires to stereo systems to small sand buckets. There was a lot of trash that had been left and my group alone collected more than 20 bags.

Throughout this experience I learned that wasteful items shouldn't be thrown carelessly about, that you have a responsibility to our environment to dispose of trash properly. Without doing so you could ruin the biodiversity of the ecosystems around us. While walking along the trail I noticed I didn't see a single animal, I saw a lot of bugs but not a single animal. I wonder if that has to do with the inability to establish habitats due to the immense amounts of trash collected in places they would typically reside. I was learned through this experience that straws aren't recyclable materials and that there are certain plastics that aren't recyclable as well. This event is beneficial to the community through its ability to promote decrease human influence on animals habitat and allow them to live in homeostasis.