FOLAR-Earth Day

Hello, my name is Luis Martinez and I am currently taking English 1005B with Ximena Hernandez and I had to participate in FoLAR's clean up the Los Angeles River event. It was on a Saturday April 22nd and I arrived at 9:00a.m. To be honest I did not want to go, but I am glad I did. By the end of the I learned three valuable lessons about our environment: do not liter all trash ends up somewhere, littering hurts our planet, and if left long enough the trash gets stuck really deep into our ground and trees. I was not as crazy as other people climbing trees and digging to pull out the plastic bags, but I feel as we all played a crucial role that day in helping out our environment. Global warming is fact not fiction. The  most common piece of trash there was plastic bags. I found them lying around, stuck on trees, deep in the dirt, and underneath dirt. What sucks about it the most is that the trash I mostly found is what we the consumers of stores throw away: grocery bags, chip bags, and ice cream wrappers. I stayed for a whole 2 hours and I only saw one bush or tree with actual blooming flowers at the cleanest part of the river. So I would believe if we make the whole river clean we could have more trees with blooming flowers which is better for the environment. The second most common trash I found was clothing. Ulysses my partner and I tried to pull a shirt from under the ground with both our strengths and we just couldn't do it. We had to give up and just pick up the easier things. It made me feel terrible because it felt like I was taking the easy way out to do my part. When the event was over it made me believe that it was possible to clean up the river bed if everybody does their part.