one piece at a time

Shining A Light On The Unsung Heroes Who Keep Trash In Its Right Place

by Ben Olson

We’ve all been there before. The sun is shining and you’re out hiking in the woods. The crisp morning air reminds you why you live in North Idaho. Then you see it: litter. Maybe it’s a little baggie filled with Fido’s droppings, or perhaps a discarded candy wrapper. Big or small, litter always has a way of bringing a scowl to one’s face.

Then there are the unsung heroes who, instead of walking by and leaving the problem for someone else, take matters into their own hands.

For Michael Darren, it was a mission with his kids to pull as many tires out of Pine Street Woods as possible.

“We frequent Pine Street Woods and one day noticed some tires on the side,” Darren said. “I told the kids we’ve got to get those out of there. Ask an adult to haul out a tire and they’re pre-wired to say, ‘Why would I do that?’ When they’re young, they know a tire doesn’t belong in the woods and if we don’t get it out, no one will.”

Darren’s three boys were soon joined by a family friend’s kids and the crew got to work.

“They thought it was fun,” Darren said. “It was a goofy mission, climbing down hillsides, pulling on sticks and finding tires.”

Working with his kids to clean up shared spaces became a time to teach valuable habits.

“For me, it’s a bigger lesson to teach my kids about learning to step up when there’s a problem,” he said. “It’s not just about passing on the idea of being stewards over the land. It’s teaching them that if something needs to get addressed, you need to step up and take care of it instead of leaving it for someone else.”

Hope resident Cynthia Mason often cleans up high-traffic recreational sites. “Garbage accumulated on the sides of roads carries a message that people are careless about their environment,” Mason said. “I wonder if some people think it’s more acceptable to throw their trash out the window or dump it on the side of the road if there’s already trash there? Maybe it’s a trash-begets-trash kind of thing. I wonder if they’ll think twice if the space is clean or if they see someone cleaning it up.”

Every year, during that brief period of time between when the snow melts and the lake hasn’t come up to summer pool, a collection of people gather at Sandpoint City Beach to participate in the Sand Creek Clean Up day, a project started by the Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper organization, and now undertaken by Idaho Conservation League

Along with regular water quality testing in Lake Pend Oreille, ICL’s clean up day (held on Earth Day) is a prime example of what happens when a lot of people pitch in to help.

The event is always a tremendous success and is responsible for eliminating hundreds of pounds of trash from our lake.

“No one wants to recreate in an area or spend time in an area that’s been trashed,” said ICL’s North Idaho Director Brad Smith. “We all enjoy going out to these places because they’re beautiful and have clean water and air, as well as open spaces to be had. We want to keep them that way.”

It’s not just about aesthetics; Smith said pulling trash out of the lake beds is also a great way to eliminate pollution.

“At last year’s cleanup, there was stuff that had fallen out of boats, like bottles of oil that can cause pollution to our lake,” Smith said. “The sooner we can get it cleaned up, the better.”

Each year the clean up produces about two dozen or more contractor bags full of trash, not including large items like tires or appliances.

“The best part about the program is that it’s self-serving and open to everyone,” Smith said. “Last year there were kids younger than five all the way up to retirees.”

For Sandpoint photographer Woods Wheatcroft, picking up litter isn’t just a habit, it’s part of his creative process. Having grown up in San Diego, California, Wheatcroft said beaches were notorious for the amount of trash left behind. He regularly dug through garbage cans and dumpsters, collecting cans to earn spare change and combing the beaches for interesting found objects—a habit that continued into his adulthood.

During an extended trip to Mexico, Wheatcroft said he began to walk the beaches with his children and collect trash . It was a free supply of materials for art.

“We started gluing stuff together and arranging things,” Wheatcroft said. “Next thing you knew, it was a treasure hunt and we were looking for the perfect color orange plastic cap to complete the piece. Everything is sun-bleached and cool-looking. It’s a great medium to work with. I actually have a fascination with the discarded items of humans.”

Wheatcroft has produced dozens of art pieces out of his found items, including a wall-sized map of his home state made completely out of found bottle caps and a display of an entire wall filled with flip-flops he’d found while wandering at the Clark Fork Driftyard with his kids.

“We used to go there and fill a canoe with trash,” he said. “That’s where we found all the sandals for that wall piece.”

It helps that several of his photographic clients, such as Patagonia, encourage Wheatcroft to continue picking up litter and creating art out of those found objects.

“Patagonia loved that series,” he said “When you find trash and turn it into art, you don’t have to pay for materials, you just have to be more creative with how you use those materials. It’s free, it’s everywhere, and it sure makes you look at things like plastic caps differently.”

Whether you’re taking the kiddos out for an adventure searching for discarded tires, creating art from bottle caps or filling bags on the shores of Sand Creek with ICL, it’s always a good time to pick up a piece of litter.