BROKEN GLASS ON THE SPLASH PAD?

These pictures were taken last summer at Firestone Park.  

Every day last summer, I made a habit of checking the playground and the splash pad at Firestone Park for trash.  It's such a beautiful park, I wanted it to look nice.

One morning, I found broken glass on the splash pad where little kids would soon be running around with bare feet!  Clear glass you couldn't see if the sprinklers were on!  I couldn't believe my eyes!  Who would do such a mean thing to try to hurt young children?

I quickly started sweeping up the glass before anyone arrived.  A mother and her two kids pulled into the parking lot, and I warned them of the glass.  They were kind enough to help me find all the pieces so I could sweep them up.

I have a dustpan and broom attached to my trash cart just for sweeping up glass.  A piece of glass cut my dog's nose and started me on my trash journey, so I am happy to find it before a dog or child does.  To date, I have swept up 550 piles of broken glass. 

I get excited when I find glass bottles that are not broken.  Sweeping up glass is very hard on my hips.  If I didn't have to bend over, it wouldn't hurt, but I there's no other way to clean it up.

Keep Akron Beautiful gave me a big broom with an attached dustpan that I could use without bending over, but it was too big to attach to my cart.

This works, and thank goodness, I don't find much glass anymore.  I still find a lot of glass bottles that are not broken yet.  I love it when I find a bottle I can pick up, one that doesn't need swept up!

The thing about glass . . . it has to be picked up.  It won't ever go away if it's not picked up.  I read that it takes 4,000 years for a glass bottle to decompose in the environment!  That's why there was so much broken glass at first, and not so much now.  It's because the broken glass I found on the sidewalks and in the streets could have been there for years.

So picking up trash really does make a difference.  If it seems like it doesn't really help, because people continue to litter, you are wrong.  It does make a difference.  New trash is easy to pick up.  Trash that is half buried in the dirt is very hard to pick up.