Earth Day has come and gone again. Maybe you planted a tree. Maybe you recycled something. Or maybe — like most of us — you just noticed how much junk is lying around and thought, “Someone should really do something about that.”
This year, I decided to be that “someone,” along with a dozen or so fellow Knights of Columbus members. We adopted a 2-mile stretch of Highway 44 east of Panora and spent 90 minutes picking up litter. By the end, we had 20 bulging bags of garbage.
The inventory was impressive in all the wrong ways: beer cans, water bottles, milk jugs, a few hubcaps and what appeared to be the scattered remains of a Ford Escort.
Our cleanup was part of Iowa’s Adopt-a-Highway program, which has been around since the 1980s. Volunteers agree to clean a stretch of road a couple of times a year. It is a simple idea: If you make people responsible for a piece of roadside, they are less likely to treat it like a moving dumpster.
I learned that lesson the hard way back in high school. A few friends and I were cruising to Des Moines in my buddy Dave’s AMC Hornet to see the Iowa Jam. Somewhere along the way, one of my buddies unwrapped a new Motley Crue cassette and casually tossed the plastic out the window. What he did not do was check the rearview mirror.
The state trooper directly behind us was not impressed. Lights flashed. We pulled over. He expressed his disappointment using several words not found in a church bulletin, then ordered us out of the car to pick up trash along the highway.
So there we were, a group of long-haired teenagers on our way to a rock concert cleaning ditches under official supervision. Twenty minutes later, we left with a warning, a bag of garbage and a very clear understanding of cause and effect.
Another lesson came from my Uncle Ray. After retiring, he rode his single-speed bike a few miles every day to Hy-Vee for coffee. Along the way, he noticed all the cans littering the roadside. Unlike most of us, he did not just complain about it. He brought a bag and started picking them up. Day after day. Mile after mile. No speeches. No social media posts. Just quiet persistence. It made him feel better, and it made the roadside look better, too. Iowa’s bottle deposit law, in place since 1978, certainly helped. A nickel per can may not sound like much, but it turns out 5 cents was just enough incentive to keep at least some empties out of the ditch. And it might have paid for Uncle Ray’s coffee, too.
If Earth Day got you thinking — even briefly — about doing something, here is an idea: Grab a bag and pick up some trash. You might not save the planet in an afternoon, but you will improve your stretch of it.
Have a great week, and thanks for reading.
Shane Goodman
President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com
515-953-4822, ext. 305 | 
