Beach Cleanup

 Today was a real good one. We had to start our summer workout packets so we made sure to get up early enough to fit everything in. We started this morning by making eggs from local chickens ( my neighbors) and some peanut butter toast. Then we made our way to the gym where we grinding out our agility/ mobility stuff before heading out to Hyland Lake where we spent the afternoon picking up trash. We found a lot of trash here. I understand that Earth day groups head down to this area to pick up trash, however we still managed to find a lot. Today was on the chillier side so we made our way along the beach for about two hours. Then, we had to make our way back to campus so that we could make our 430 practice. Today was successful!  TOTAL HOURS 35

 After this weekend, we decided that we needed to continue our education on the matter. We got on a phone call with one of Caroline's aunts who is also very passionate about the environment. She lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and told us about her immaculate community and what they do around there to keep it that way. Today was trash day and she told us that, like Bow, Gloucester excepts recycling and properly recycles what is given to them. This is not the case everywhere you go. In some instances, towns will use two different cans, however, both the trash and the recycling will go to the same firing facilities. This is not good news at all. We understand that this issue goes far beyond just environmental as it is also an economic issue as well. We have to recognize that for some communities, combining both trash and recycling is simply cheaper. We do not necessarily have a solution to this issue, but we hope to encourage people to take their recycling to facilities that will...

 This week was nothing but fulfilling. We started off a little concerned that maybe we weren't going to be able to fill up our time only picking trash considering the local spots are clean. With that being said, we made a plan to try and reduce the amount of trash we were using every day so that we would not be a part of that problem. We still managed to get around to picking up trash as this is very beneficial, however, we wanted to go the extra distance. We would separate our mornings by meal prepping and getting ready to venture out. We made sure to pack our lunches and eat breakfast here as a way to save a little more money and reduce the amount of trash we were producing. We were very good about staying on top of this as this is something we are relatively passionate about. I think in all, we probably have a lot more hours than we have written out considering the amount of time we spend cooking and prepping for our day. Another thing that we have been pretty excited about is o...

 On Day Six we had the one and only Lynda Everett in town, so we had to use her to our advantage. We came to campus relatively early before our game to walk on the rail trail and talk business. Being our mentor, we naturally had lots to talk about regarding our week considering we spent much of our time crafting functional solutions and ways to live a little greener. Lynda is a big hiker and spends a lot of her time in the mountains of New England, so she gave us a few ideas of places we could travel to. Also, Kelby, Lola, and Grace told us a little bit about their project. Since they are creating a trail map of local hikes, we were curious about how much trash they see on their routes. They, unfortunately, told us that they see copious amounts of trash and that maybe sometime this week we could combine our forces to encourage people to hike in these locations, and also to be more aware of the mark they leave behind. Our walk on the rail trail revealed little trash which is once ag...

Today was a day well spent in The City of Concord as we searched to find sustainable options for average joes. We actually initially wanted to talk to the people at the dump in order to find simpler ways to recycle and more efficient ways to throw out their trash, however, they were quite busy today and not in the mood for conversation. That’s ok! We will persist! And that we did. We wandered into Concords, Bonafide Green Goods store which sells sustainable alternatives for pretty much everything you can think of. We actually set up an interview with the store owner for next week so that we can get a little insight in how she lives life. I’m actually really glad we spent some time in there. Pek purchased a little card as a Mother’s Day gift that you can actually plant and a sunflower will grow. We thought that was pretty neat. Then, we communicated with our Mentor, Lynda Everett and she has decided to check out Bonafide herself and purchase some of their awesomeness. All in all, today ...

Today, we made the grand decision to head on over to Alton Bay. My aunt has a house in Young's Cove, so we decided to take the paddle boards out in search of more trash. We took the paddle boards around the exterior of the lake in hopes (not really) of finding some trash that could have potentially washed into the water from the recent snow loss and runoff from Mount. Major. We were unfortunately successful, and although Winnipesaukee is a clean lake, there were several plastic bags and fishing wire caught in the rocks. This was sad to see considering how much time I spend there and how I have likely abused Winnipesaukee and all its beautifulness. Once we made our rounds, we headed to the Alton Public Docks where we walked along the sand picking up a suspicious amount of trash. This was confusing to us considering it is so early in the summer season, and not a lot of people are likely at their summer homes. Throughout this process, we only found one singular trash can. On our drive...

 Going into it, we knew that Elbow is notoriously clean, but we still wanted to help better the places we love and use so much. This morning, we woke up on the earlier side to get crafting our master plan. That being said, we started laying down the plans for potential trash cans at Kezar Lake considering so far, this was our most polluted area. Then we started brainstorming ideas for our flyers essentially encouraging people to carry in and out of these locations or place their trash in the cans provided. However, at Elbow, there are no trashcans, yet we barely found any trash. We came to the conclusion that this is because the Proctor community knows better than to leave trash in these areas, and there are probably people regularly coming to clean it. Basically, whenever we have a hard time finding trash, we take our time with trail maintenance to make sure people know where the trails are. Our day spent at Elbow gave us the perfect example of what these communities should look l...