FOLAR

                               (Someone could have ate that orange.)

     Hello, my name is Cameron Haynes and I am a sophomore at Cal State LA taking Professor Hernandez's ENGL 2030 course. On April 22nd I went to the LA River to help FoLAR(Friends of the LA River) pick up the trash scattered across the river. This was my first time attending such an event so I had little to no idea of what to expect, except the fact that there was going to be a lot of trash. When walking down the path to the river, I saw exactly that.

     The photo above was just a portion of what was picked up. Some common items people found were clothes, scraps of metal, and plastic bags(excluding the ones used to pick up trash). I didn't have any amazing finds myself, but to see old carts and mattresses piled along with what should be your everyday disposable items was very surprising. When I started to pick up the trash around the river, I noticed something strange about one of the bushes.

A bush with small flowers growing out of it.

     This is another one of the few things that surprised me about the LA River. I knew it was filled with trash but I didn't expect to see any kind of vegetation.With so many things around like the rocks, metal, and plastic within the soil I assumed it wouldn't be all that possible. It was still nice to see though.

More plastic by the river

As I got closer to the river, the concentration of plastic grew. In the picture to the left you can see there are many scraps of plastic in the soil.The difference between the amount of plastic by the rocks and the open soil was significantly high. This was also much harder to remove, since the plastic was lodged in pretty well.












We often hear about how littering and not recycling are harming our planet however not much attention is given to the issue. I was somewhat aware of the problem but to actually get a glimpse of what was going on made me wonder why people were still throwing their trash out so irresponsibly. I suppose it's because we don't see the consequences of our actions in person. If anyone were to see how much trash was lying around the river, I believe that they would be more conscious of their decisions. All in all this was an interesting experience. Seeing so many people take the time out of their day to improve their community was very inspiring.