The Water Cycle

This is a garbage post, but trust me, it's a worthwhile garbage post.

I've encountered my fair share of interesting folks and businesses since I started working at Wash Cycle 2+ years ago, and the list keeps growing, which of course lends itself to more new experiences.  Through them, I met the folks at United by Blue, who are not only clients, but also really awesome people.  More on them later.

Yesterday, I signed up to volunteer on a clean up they had organized.  They conduct these on the first Tuesday of every month.  This month's Philly edition was held at Bartram's Garden, which gave me an excuse to ride 5 miles out to Southwest Philly:

I was singing Octopus' Garden the whole ride there for some reason...

The ride was a bit scary at times.  I took Vare Ave. for part of the ride, which parallels the Schuylkill Expressway, leading people to exceed the 35 MPH speed limit quite often.  Even on a 3-lane wide avenue, it's still scary.  Shortly thereafter, I turned onto the Grays Ferry Bridge, which sits right next to a trash transfer station (I told you this was a garbage post).  After successfully dodging all manner of debris on the bridge, I found myself in the urban wasteland of abandoned row homes and delinquent factories that plague the Southwest.  Not the prettiest ride, hence the lack of pictures.

Bartram's Garden, on the other hand, is a beautiful place that's been preserved and operated (in varying capacities) since 1893, and is one of the oldest in the country.  It's also terribly fallen victim to littering and drifting garbage over the years, which is probably why UBB decides to hold a clean up here every late Winter.  From despair comes inspiration, though, as about 100 people showed up to help.  Believe it or not, I was the only person who rode a bike:

Maybe it's because there's not much bike parking there...

Exciting stuff, though.  OK, picking up trash is not really anyone's idea of exciting, but doing it for the best of causes and meeting some great people in the process makes it seem more like a party than a chore.  It also helps when the organizers provide free stuff like Clif Bars (one of my favorite guilty pleasures):

Where are the Steve bars?

Inspired Brews' kombucha on tap (if that's your thing):

I prefer beer

And local/organic fruit cups from Honeygrow:

Those who arrived late still got fruit cup

United by Blue is an outdoor apparel company that organizes these cleanups because their co-mission (in addition to profit) is to remove one pound of trash from the oceans for every item that they sell in their stores or online.  Basically, water connects everything, everything is united by blue.  Cue the hippy picture where I tell you why it's important not to litter:

Bonus preservation tip: don't be an idiot that throws trash out your window on the expressway

After the intro to what we were doing and why we were here, it was time to get to work.  Groups of about 15 scattered throughout the gardens and picked up and sorted trash and recyclables for about 2 hours.  I paused briefly to admire this view, which will probably be gorgeous once the trees bloom:

It already looks better with less trash

This is another place I'll come back to explore once the weather turns nicer and I have a free day.  Big picture-wise, the Gardens are eventually going to be connected to Center City and beyond via the Schuylkill Banks trail.  So basically, you'll be able to ride from Southwest Philly up to Manayunk and further without ever having to get on a major road.  Righteous, no?

After cleanup, we lugged our trash & recycling bags back to the meetup point.  Blue is for recycling, white is for trash:

My bike is going to be re-cycled. See what I did there?

Our group got back at about 5:45, and some groups that were further down the river didn't get back until closer to 6, so that's just a small portion of what we collected.  Amazingly, we collected over 1,900 pounds of discarded items, and about 70% of that will be able to be recycled.  UBB also provided us gloves to use during cleanup, and guess who's going to be washing them:

Well, obviously someone that's not me...

In case you didn't notice, that's a Wash Cycle Laundry bag.  :D  UBB awarded 2 people after all had returned: the person who guessed closest to how many pounds we picked up, and the person who found the weirdest item.  I wasn't one of them.  Meh.  I still had fun, and so did everyone else:

Photo Courtesy: Honeygrow

The rain held off just long enough for me to ride there, help with the cleanup, and ride home before dinner.

All in all, picking up trash yesterday was pretty flippin' awesome.  It would be even better if we didn't have to do it at all though...