* Commentary
Lake Hiwassee – I spent part of my Saturday helping out with the 22nd annual Big Sweep, where volunteers took to the waters of Lake Hiwassee with the goal of removing as much litter and debris from the lake and shores as possible.
As the group of volunteers I tagged along with rode out onto the beautiful blue sheet of water on Lake Hiwassee, there wasn’t a piece of trash in sight. However, once our pontoon boat navigated back into one of the many coves that cut through the banks of the lake, the trash became more apparent.
We donned gloves, grabbed garbage bags and hopped down onto the shore, searching every nook and cranny among the rocks and timber for whatever trash we could find.
Once everyone felt like the spot had been adequately cleared, we re-launched our boat and searched for another location to repeat the process.
On the way back to the meeting point, where all the garbage would be collected, I was told by another volunteer that there wasn’t as much trash littering the shores as there had been in previous years. That was encouraging to hear, and evidence that the previous 21 years of Big Sweeps have had a positive impact.
Still, the sheer amount of garbage the fleet of volunteers removed from the shores and shallows of the lake, albeit less than previous years, was still a sad sight to behold. At the end of the event, more than two dozen large bags full of an assortment of plastic and glass bottles, soda and beer cans, along with plenty of other litter, were lined up on the boat ramp in a solemn row of refuse.
Piled at one of end sat more than a dozen tires of various shapes and sizes, along with other larger debris, such as wooden chairs, that had been found during the cleanup.
It’s mind-boggling that with all of the resources and land we’ve reaped from the earth, we can’t even manage to properly dispose of our garbage.
The world isn’t our garbage bin. If you disagree with that, maybe you’re part of the problem.