Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: abbott spring farm, alcohol, book sale, bottle bill, brayman hollow road, bread, Connecticut, connecticut route 244, dunkin donuts, garbage, garden, litter, long weekend, peas, Pomfret, ragged hill farm, redeemables, vineyard valley, vineyard valley golf course, water bottles, yogurt
It is long weekend. I am in Connecticut, at home. I have been cleaning up my yard, and I will soon be working in my garden. I planted peas the last weekend in March as I thought it was time to plant them, but I do not think that it was. Not a single pea has peaked above ground. Perhaps this was an especially cold March? Maybe they are taking their time. I don’t know.
I picked up litter on 6/10ths of a mile on my road. I did this six months ago as well. I collected:
Redeemables (67)
32 alcohol cans
18 alcohol bottles
9 non-alcohol cans
8 non-alcohol bottles
Things that were redeemable before their barcodes became unreadable (32)
22 alcohol containers
10 non-alcohol containers
Non-redeemables (46)
13 alcohol containers
19 water bottles
5 iced tea containers
4 juice containers
2 coffee containers
2 milk containers
1 tin can
Garbage (one medium-sized trash bag)
30 or so plastic and Styrofoam cups (most from Dunkin Donuts)
1 portable fan
If this rate is consistent along Route 244‘s 3.6 miles in Pomfret (which it likely is; there are no major roads that intersect with 244 besides at its ends), there are 1740 recyclable containers thrown out of car windows onto my road every year. There are 28 houses on my street, one golf course, and two large farms. There are 56 containers for each of these! Every week an average of twenty alcohol containers are thrown out car windows onto this one stretch of road.
Because the expanded bottle bill passed fewer water containers will be thrown out of car windows as they have been given value. I am sad that the bottle bill did not include other possible additions such as coffee and tea containers. While the bill was being drawn up there was also talk of increasing deposits to 10 cents. There is other incentive to throw alcohol containers out of car windows. I don’t know how to solve that problem.
The town of Pomfret, Connecticut will be having a town-wide roadside clean up tomorrow, Saturday, April 18th. I will be participating!
There will be two book sales, a rummage sale and an auction on Saturday, May 2nd. I believe that both public libraries are currently accepting book donations at specific times.
I am starting to dream up my summer, and I decided that I am going to make non-stop yogurt and bread. OM NOM NOM
Pomfretite 