The world is not your garbage can, people!
Trash. It is EVERYWHERE.
I live in New York City and I cannot even set foot outside without being entirely
surrounded by plastic wrappers, plastic bottles, and a whole bunch of garbage.
And it still blows my mind to discover that people in 2019 are throwing garbage
on the street... just tossing it out of their car or out of their hand on their
walk somewhere. I have never littered in my life. At least not intentionally. I
guess it's possible that one time I put something into a garbage can and then it
blew out onto the street and became litter... but I've never contributed
knowingly to the litter on the street... but I'm just entirely flabbergasted at
the thought of someone just taking a wrapper of something they've eaten and
throwing it to the wind. *sighs* Garbage. It seems that in 2019 the word "sustainability" has
become somewhat of a buzzword which is a great thing. I began making videos about
zero waste and zero plastic back in 2016, and even though I am NOT 100% zero waste
by any means... I am constantly trying to lower my impact and produce as little
trash as possible. Oftentimes video ideas just come to me out of the blue... So
sometimes it will be when I'm meditating and thinking and actually trying to come
up with an idea... but other times I'll just be walking down the street and I
will see something that will trigger an idea for a video. And in this case... it is
the trash. The other day I was out and about, walking down the street, and I was
completely shocked at how much trash was on the sidewalk. It was almost as if
someone had taken an entire trashcan and dumped it onto the sidewalk. This is
especially alarming to me because, living in a city like New York which is a
coastal city, storm drains lead directly to the ocean. So that means that if
there's garbage and plastic in the street, any single time it rains that's
gonna head straight into the storm drain, which is then going to be emptied out
into the ocean... and kill all the fish and kill all the animals. Scientists are
already estimating that by the year 2050 we will have more plastic and trash in
our oceans than fish... What?! Obviously we've got a problem. And obviously I'm
just one person, so I'm not gonna turn the whole world around with this one
video... but I'm hoping that this video inspires you
to make a little change or do something good in your neighborhood. Yesterday I
put myself to the test. I was curious, if I went outside onto the streets of New
York City for just three to four hours... how many bags of trash could I collect?
It was a simple question. I went along with my assistant because I wanted to
take a friend with me, and she knows a whole lot about plastic and recycling
and what goes in what bag... so I knew she'd be a great asset for this trip...
plus she really wanted to help out. We gathered all the necessary supplies,
which included different types of garbage bags, recycling bags, a garbage
grabber, gloves... and then we got prepped by tying some of the garbage bags onto
my backpack so that I didn't have to hold everything as we hit the streets.
That's it! We are ready to hit the streets.
See you in Manhattan.
I found a burrito! A burrito... YUM.
Put your poop away, people.
What size is it? Maybe it fits Michael...
That's very alarming...
You're a winner... Do you want a Coke?
No? Okay.
The subways are for another day.
I'm not sure what that was...
We found a lot of really random things... I found a plastic rhino...
This is kind of cool! I think I might keep it...
Not sure what that was about... A ton of receipts... one was for over two thousand dollars of alcohol...
15 kegs!
Off-camera: Wow.
Lucie: And receipts are NOT recyclable, by the way... Surprisingly, we did not find as
many plastic bottles as we thought we would find... which is a great sign. I think
the most surprising thing to me was how much paper was just blowing around on
the sidewalk... Some of it was pamphlets from stores,
some was magazine paper... I don't even know where this paper came from, but I
would say the bulk of what we picked up was paper. We found a couple of crushed
Coke cans, and then we even found one Coke can that was fully intact and
actually closed... and I offered it to a Pepsi driver...
Lucie (off-camera): Do you want a Coke?
Lucie: No? Okay, me neither.
In New York City, there are a lot of these garden areas... so, little areas on
the side of the street that are sort of fenced off with the tree in the middle...
or, actually, little garden areas up against some of the buildings that have
fences... and I found that a lot of the trash we found today was thrown into
these gardens... so we did a lot of digging around in grass and greenery and
shrubbery to get a lot of that garbage out. I didn't expect this to happen but
we got thanked on the street, by three random people who were just passing by.
One person said "thank you so much for doing that" and just walked by... another
person said "thank you for your service" as if I'm in the Army or something... and
it was amazing to see that people on the street were actually really grateful
when they saw someone helping to clean up the trash in their neighborhood. One
area where we had the most difficulty was this puddle of water that was just
filled with garbage... and it was actually right at the corner of the street next
to the storm drain, so if we hadn't cleaned that area out... that was headed
for the fish. I was really grateful to do this with a friend, because obviously,
working with another person I was able to collect double the amount of garbage
as I would have been able to get on my own... and it was just a great opportunity
for the two of us to bond together. So yes, we were picking up trash, but we were
also having some deep conversations and laughing and catching up, and I think
this is a great thing for you to go do with a friend sometime soon, because it's
a total relationship-building activity while you're doing something great for
your community. By the end of the day, we had picked up... drum roll please...
not one...
not two...
not three...
not four...
not five...
but SIX bags of trash.
Three were recyclable, three were not. To break it down further for you, one of those was
plastics--which included the plastic bottles... two were filled with recyclable
paper... and three were plain old garbage. Ew.
We tied them all off and we put them on the side of the street
where the trash and recycling collection was going to be coming
the following morning. The day we went outside and did this... I'm
telling you, it was so freezing outside that I'm convinced we could have gotten
a lot more trash if we weren't quite as frozen solid.
I felt like my hands weren't moving well or clamping the grabber properly because
I was so cold... and I think if we maybe go out and do this in the
spring or in the summer when it's a lot warmer outside, we will be able to stay
out for longer, and thus we'll be able to pick up more trash. But, because we were
so cold... when we got home, my assistant, my photographer and I put our feet in a hot
bath and defrosted our toes. We are definitely going to do part two of this
video because we had so much fun together, and we do want to see how much
of an impact we can have in the future... but I would love some of your
suggestions, if you have any, for any cool things that we can maybe do with the
trash and recycling instead of just tying it up and leaving it for the
collectors. One cool idea that I had-- which would have been really cool if I
had some more time for this video... would be to find a local artist that we can
collaborate with, and maybe bring that person the bag of recyclable bottles
that they can make into some cool art installation... but definitely comment
below and let me know if you have any more ideas about what we can do with
this stuff. Another cool idea could be bringing the bottles in and getting some
cash in exchange, and then donating that cash to an environmental conservation
agency... something like that. So comment below and let me know if you have any
cool ideas for what we can do with the stuff that we collect in the future. I
just want to call out: This video was mainly just see how much trash I could
collect on the streets of New York City with a friend in a few hours, and I know
that it's not SAVING THE WORLD. The major thing that I took away from all of this
is that we were able to collect a bunch of garbage in just a few short hours, so
imagine how much garbage can be saved from winding up in the storm drains and
in the ocean if everyone out there just picked up a little bit of trash on their
way to work today... The next time you're outside and you see something on the
street, pick it up and put it in a bin. And better yet, schedule a whole day with
a friend to go outside, put some gloves on, take a garbage bag, and see how much
garbage you can take off the streets. Thank you so much for coming back to my
channel. I hope this inspires you to do something good for the environment today.
Comment below and let me know what other videos you want to see from me, and I'll see you next time.
Bye!