To the Editor:

I’d like to extend a warm thank you to The Eco Cleaners: Claire Dubois, Elizabeth Salley, Alexia Tavar, Alisa Redzepi, and Brianna Lovely.

From Eliza Hallabeck’s recent piece: “A group of eighth grade students have been picking up garbage, and are challenging other students and community members to join them… Each school year, eighth graders are challenged to complete a science project… teams are required to define an environmental issue that is important to them, develop an action plan to address the issue, implement the plan, and report on the results.”

I regularly run on the roads around my house, and bring a garbage bag with me once a week in order to pick up everything I can.  I have been doing this ever since I moved to town in 2009, and the amount of trash is astounding.  From just two cleanups, The Eco Cleaners have gathered 32 pounds of recyclables and 12 pounds of garbage.

I refuse to believe that Newtowners are responsible for this epidemic of littering (more than likely, it’s people from out of town who use our roads as cut-throughs).  However, if we don’t take it upon ourselves to clean up the trash that lines our roads, we’re every bit as guilty as the perpetrators.  The mentality of “I didn’t do it, so it’s not my problem” needs to be wiped out.

The solution is a simple one: each day, take a moment and pick up trash on your property or along the portion of the roadway that’s immediately visible from your drive.  If we each do this simple thing, our roads will be consistently beautiful.  Thank you again to The Eco Cleaners for helping to make a difference, and for bringing this issue to the fore.

Hayden Bates

6 Key Rock Road, Newtown                    November 21, 2014