Experience at L.A River Clean Up

Hello,

My name is Muycheng Taing, and I am a student in Mrs. Hernandez's English 101 class. Today, many students, volunteers, and I participated in a FOLAR River Clean up Event to help out our community. Since our class emphasizes on our impacts on the environment, we participate in this event to create a connection to what we learned in class and to create some positive impacts to our river. Before taking this class, I did not know that we have a river in Los Angeles, and I feel very excited to be able to visit and clean up the L.A River. At the clean up, a few classmates and I formed a group and we sorted the type of trash we picked and tallied them up. I learned that most of the trash around the river is mostly plastic bags and Styrofoam cups. Of course there were other types of trash such as aluminum can, glass, metal, fabric, and wood, but plastic and Styrofoam was the most abundant. I realized that wind and rain fall can gather our litter and trash into the river and ocean. Just like what I read in Colin Beaven's No Impact Man, our trash really do make its way to the river and ocean and ends up forming a big island of trash. Those plastic and Styrofoam create the most harmful pollution because their chemical makeup harm animals and fishes in the river and ocean. Since our drinking water is from the river water, the pollution can also harm our health. Those trash is the evidence of our littering habit and our negative impacts on the environment especially river and ocean pollution. Not to mention that some of the trash can be recycle and some of them should not be there if we use reusable materials. Therefore, I learned that if we use the reusable cups and bags and stop littering, then we will not see as many Styrofoam and plastic lying around our river. Moreover, we can reduce our negative impacts on our river and our environment by putting the appropriate trash into the appropriate recycle bins or trash cans. After this clean up, I feel that I had made a difference to the environment by reducing the amount of trash at the river, and of course everyone else can make a difference!