This past Sunday, I had the pleasure of riding my bicycle on the Loop alongside the Santa Cruz Riverbed. However, what I saw was distressing. The riverbed was strewn with trash. Almost every bush and tree had caught some of the garbage heading downstream. Some of the trash will be biodegradable, but most of it won’t.
I noticed an overabundance of expanded polystyrene drinking cups provided by convenience stores. These cups take around 500 years to degrade in a landfill (longer if buried), but more importantly, can flow out to the ocean, then breakdown into microplastics. Microplastics are harmful to marine life and will take decades or even centuries to breakdown.
My idea for ridding the riverbed of trash is to enlist the help of the people experiencing homelessness. We would need to find those that would like to help, then organize them into teams to collect trash under supervision. Workers would be paid and perhaps move up on waitlist for available housing.
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Edward Weil
North side
Disclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star.
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