Spring Cleaning at the Field Station
Posted on Tuesday, April 21, 2009
In preparation for a proper celebration of Earth Week, April 19-25, at the Field Station, a handful of local Walmart associates volunteered on March 21, the first day of spring, to help clean up after a long winter. Traditional and non-traditional cleaning was in order.
Walmart stores nationwide are supposed to have "PSP teams" - PSP stands for Personal Sustainability Projects. These are supposed to result in worthwhile and "green" activities. The New Castle Walmart happens to have such a team and the person who chairs that just happens to be my daughter! This is a pretty tight loop! Projects she schedules are earth friendly and are truly volunteer efforts - they are done "off the time clock." What these projects result in are small, but important, changes in the environment. The team regularly picks up trash along the highways, plants trees, collects coffee grounds from the staff lounge and, on the 21st of March they returned for their annual visit to the Field Station.
The yard needed to be raked and cleared of leftovers from the winter's chipping party, the bags of shredded paper that had accumulated outside were overdue to be emptied and, without further comment, several bags of compostable food waste from Westminster's dining halls had begun to show "aging" but still required hand sorting to remove plastic! On that Saturday morning, approximately 200 pounds of yard waste were cleaned up, 60 pounds of community shredded paper were emptied, 140 pounds of food waste were hand sorted and 900 pounds of branches were chipped. All of these, in one way or another, will feed the composting project that has run since July 1, 2005.
When the PSP team left, I found this precious note written on the board of the Nature Center by the eight year old granddaughter of one of the team's members: "bye i will miss you see you again some day i hope." And she signed her name with the addition of a proper adjective, "tree hugger." The future is in the hands of children like this young woman. Earth Week 2009 deserves more of her kind!
Clarence Harms, Director
Field Station
harmsc@westminster.edu
724-946-8520
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