Guest Column: Value your community; volunteer to clean up

I'm sitting in my office thinking about what to write about for the Great American Cleanup this year. Last year's was a tremendous success (if you consider picking up someone's litter a success). With more than 1,700 volunteers and 16 volunteer centers in the city and county, 50 tons of litter was picked up in three hours on a sunny, Saturday morning.

How do you write about someone else's bad habits? Habits are learned at a young age, and that's where the answer lies. At one Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful seminar for the Great American Cleanup, we were asked why we do what we do. The explanation was that at a young age we were taught the value of community pride; keeping things tidy became a habit that stayed with us. Many heads in our audience nodded in agreement, realizing then why we were so committed to our deeds.

One of our missions at Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful is to educate kids who will grow up with the knowledge that it's wrong to toss litter along the roadside. We hope they will become good stewards of this land, and look forward to seeing them cleaning up our community.

Many of you remember the TV ad of the Indian paddling his canoe through a sea of litter; with a tear running down his cheek, even more litter was thrown at his feet from a passing car as he stepped ashore. Do you remember the wise old owl saying, "Give a hoot; don't pollute"? These ads worked for years, but bad habits return, don't they?

Recycling seems like a remote operation, so let's change the word "recycle" to "reuse" for a moment. I recall my parents teaching us that pop bottles could be returned to stores for a deposit; we did this and bought candy. Glass jars were used as containers for screws, paint, homemade salad dressing and jams.

There's nothing new about canvas shopping bags; grandma had several. Grandpa and Dad worked in the garden and salvaged pieces of plumbing pipe to irrigate and quench the thirst of their prize tomatoes. My father, a carpenter, brought home pieces of hardwood that we used for cooking out.

Even our grapevine garage was framed with used lumber from Dad's remodeling jobs. Perhaps it was the Depression that honed my parents' resolve not to waste.
Nonetheless, the lessons stuck with us, and even to this day I give plastic grocery bags to the neighbor kids to reuse as they grow and sell sweet corn.