JENNIFER CORR

jcorr@antonmediagroup.com

On the morning of Saturday, April 22, you could find people of all ages strolling downtown Glen Cove with a bucket and a trash picker.

This group of people had sacrificed their Saturday morning to help make their community not only beautiful to look at, but also safe for all the critters who call Glen Cove home and for the nearby Long Island Sound.

The Glen Cove Beautification Commission hosted its annual Earth Day litter cleanup event at First Baptist Church in Glen Cove. It was simple for all who attended: show up, grab a bucket and a picker and pick up the trash that had been left behind. Glen Cove Mayor Pam Panzenbeck, who was in attendance, said that liquor bottles, cigarette butts and food wrappers had been among the main culprits littering the city when she was out contributing to the cleanup.

“People just throw their litter out and we pick it up,” Panzenbeck said. “Litter isn’t anything that anybody likes to look at. When you drive through a neighborhood filled with litter it doesn’t make you feel good. It makes you feel like people don’t care about the neighborhood. These [volunteers] really care about how Glen Cove looks. They’re giving up their time to be here today and a number of them are city employees.”

This year’s event was held in remembrance of a Glen Cove Beautification Commission volunteer and city employee Bill Byrne, who passed away suddenly two years ago.

“I still have my last voicemail from him and he was very much into litter patrol,” Panzenbeck said.

Amy Franklyn, the treasurer of the Glen Cove Beautification Commission and an employee at City Hall, said she remembered Byrne’s passion for his work in keeping the community clean.

“It upsets me that people don’t care enough to pick up their own trash and even if you see somebody else’s trash, it’s not a big deal to pick it up,” Franklyn said. “People will leave their garbage out a couple of days in advance of garbage pickup, and it just increases the problem. We’re just trying to raise awareness.”

Franklyn said a lot of great volunteers came out that morning, including students who were rewarded with community service hours.

“When you see the amount of trash this group of people picked up in just one morning, it’s amazing,” Franklyn said. “And it’s sad too... It’s just a little piece [in solving the problem] but maybe somebody will see us doing [a litter cleanup] and think.”

For those interested in doing their part in keeping Glen Cove clean, the Glen Cove Beautification Commission is selling buckets and trash pickers for a $20 donation.

About Earth Day:

According to Earth Day’s official website, in the decades leading up to the first Earth Day in 1970, Americans were consuming vast amounts of leaded gas through massive and inefficient automobiles and industry was belching out smoke and sludge with little fear of consequences. Air pollution was accepted and mainstream America was not aware of how pollution could threaten human health.

The first Earth Day came about after then-Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson witnessed the results of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California in 1969. Inspired by the student-led anti-war movement happening at the time, he wanted to merge that energy with a public conscious-

With the help of a Republican-minded Congressman Pete McCloskey and a young activist named Denis Haynes, teach-ins (an extended meeting usually held on a college campus for lectures, debates, and discussions to raise awareness of or express a position on a social or political issue) was organized on college campuses.

Recognizing the potential of such an event, Hayes built a national staff to promote events in an effort that included a wide range of organizations, faith groups and others. The name of the class of events was changed to Earth Day, sparking national attention.

“Earth Day inspired 20 million Americans — at the time, 10 percent of the total population of the United States — to take to the streets, parks and auditoriums to demonstrate against the impacts of 150 years of industrial development which had left a growing legacy of serious human health impacts,” the website stated.

“Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment and there were massive coast-to-coast rallies in cities, towns, and communities.”

Earth Day in 1970 achieved a rare political alignment of both Republicans and Democrats and led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, as well as the first-of their-kind environmental laws like the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Clean Air Act. Two years later Congress passed the Clean Water Act, and after that the Endangered Species Act and soon the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.

“These laws have protected millions of men, women and children from disease and death and have protected hundreds of species from extinction,” the website stated. Today, Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world and the need to fight for a clean environment has only increased.

—Additional information provided by Earthday.org.