Litter Police make a difference

| 04 Apr 2012 | 11:46

By Marie Stella Parkin WEST MILFORD — On a beautiful Friday afternoon, Christina Shao, Olivia Swartz-Rubin and I, Marie Parkin, were enjoying recess. As we walked through our playground, we noticed litter everywhere. We all agreed it was a shame that people didn't care enough to clean up after themselves. But as we looked around more and more, we decided we wanted to do something about it. Even if other people don't care, we do. This is our school.

So we immediately started picking up the trash and putting it in a pile. By the time recess was over, we had a small mountain of garbage. But there was still more litter, lots more to pick up. While we were on line waiting to go back into school, Jessica Rhinesmith and Megan Barone asked if they could help us next time. Two boys, Thomas Kilroy and Joshua Curving, both said they would be happy to help clean up the school. We said, "Sure, we need the help." At that moment, I said we should start a club to clean up the litter. Everyone agreed.

After the weekend, on the following Monday, Megan brought garbage bags and gloves for everyone in the club. We all went to the playground and picked up the pile of litter which we had left the previous Friday. There were bottles, cans, tissues, gum wrappers, milk cartons and some stuff that we didn't even know what it was. That first pile of trash filled up twelve garbage bags. At the end of recess we brought the bags into the school and threw them out in the classroom garbage cans. After that, we washed our hands. Our club had a great first day.

The next day, we brought more bags and more gloves and we even got more club members. After we cleaned up more trash on this second day, we decided we wanted to name our club, so we all voted and we officially became "The Litter Police" or "LP" for short.

Since then, we have picked up trash during every recess, and our club has been getting bigger and bigger. We have lots of great members. From the playground to the soccer field, to the baseball field and all the way to the outfield fences, LP members have picked up bags and bags of trash. After several days, we started to notice that the piles of collected trash were getting smaller and smaller. We really were doing something about the problem. We were making an improvement. Today, the Litter Police are still patrolling the area. The trash piles are a lot smaller and our Westbrook School is a lot more beautiful.