By Mary Reid Barrow

Sadly, in this season to be thankful for friends, family and all the beauty that surrounds us, LRNow is definitely feeling ungrateful for a huge blot on the landscape that grow bigger every year.

Trash!

We are winding up our last cleanups of 2024 and we see in stark contrast that the amount of trash across our land and seascapes grows ever bigger every year.

Our volunteers and staff are out more than once a month picking up hundreds of pounds of plastic bags, food wrappers, drink cans and bottles and so much more.

Take Mount Trashmore, Virginia Beach’s favorite park.

We are so grateful for the volunteers who helped us pick up bags upon bags of trash on a chilly day at the park two weeks ago. It was our final big cleanup of the year.

On land and in kayaks on Lake Windsor, we gathered 867 pounds of those bags, containers, wrappers and more, said Cristin Pullman, Community Outreach Coordinator.

Last year, the total amount of trash we picked up at Mount Trashmore was 722 pounds, 100 pounds less than this year. The same was true all over the city. In 2023, LRNow clean ups removed 12,555 pounds of trash from the land and sea. This year, the total is 23,377 pounds, which includes a huge neighborhood clean up in Scarborough Square.

“It’s hard to look at this mess and not feel sad about how wasteful we have become,” said Vince Bowhers, LRNow’s Restoration Coordinator, who was in his kayak out on Lake Windsor hauling trash out of the water.

“We can’t just count on dedicated citizens to clean it up,” Vince added. “We need to stop being a single-use society.”

In the New Year, once again LRNow is going to ask City Council to support our efforts to move away from being a single use society by at least encouraging reusable shopping bags. We will ask council to impose a 5 cent tax on disposable plastic bags provided to customers in grocery, drug and convenience stores, and in retail shops.

And to think, all that trash at Mount Trashmore was left behind by people who never thought twice about what they were doing to spoil the park for the next visitors. Even worse, they didn’t think that they were depending on their fellow citizens, LRNow volunteers and others, to clean up after them.

LRNow director Karen Forget put it bluntly. “We’re so tired of cleaning up your trash. ”

“I frequently tell people we can’t clean our way out of this mess,” Vince said. “I also remind them how bad it would be if we didn’t try.”

With help from our great volunteers, LRNow keeps on trying. But it’s hard to be thankful.