Several area organizations will be holding outdoor spring cleanup events this April and May. Photo by Susan M. Songster-Weaver

As winter winds down and the snow melts away, the green world stirs. Birds and other wild creatures start to venture out, drowsy from their cozy burrows and long sleeps. We also start to see that most dependable of signatures of spring – the drift of trash left behind by melting snow.

Whether dropped out of pockets and blown away in sharp winter winds or dropped into the snow and vanished into that fluffy shroud, that trash tends to gather up along hedgerows, forest margins and the edges of parking lots and highways. It can also be swept downstream in meltwater surges. This presents both a problem and an opportunity. While the grasses and shrubs still cautiously test their photosynthesis and growth opportunities, we can easily locate and remove these unfortunate seasonal drifts of detritus.

Personally, the kit I like to use for this purpose is a bucket and a grabby claw tool to mitigate the yuck factor of picking up wet trash. The right grabby tool can pick up even cigarette butts and bottle caps and leave behind no trace of the sodden refuse left behind by spring’s warming. I take my cleanup kit, go for a walk and pick up what I find along the way, setting the limit per walk to the capacity of my bucket. Since I walk the same route often, this approach ends up leaving my neighborhood in pretty good shape by the end of May and only occasionally means remembering the bucket and tool to grab new deposits of accidental trash lost along the way.

I also regularly cleanup what I find at the places I visit for work or for pleasure because I value those places and know that others come to enjoy them too. Everyone has a more pleasant experience when there isn’t trash tumbling about.

Many organizations and individuals embark on a yearly effort to locate and remove what drifted away from human hands during the previous year. Volunteer beach sweeps and roadside cleanups get organized around the area all spring, summer and fall to try to keep the wild “trash berry bush” from proliferating too much.

This spring, the Audubon Community Nature Center will be holding their “Volunteer Day Team Challenge” on April 24th, which includes some roadside cleanup. The Conewango Creek Watershed Association, along with the Chautauqua-Conewango Consortium, Chautauqua Lake Association and Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy, will be holding a cleanup of the Chadakoin River and Conewango Creek flows on May 21st with opportunities to participate both on the water and on the banks. The Buffalo Niagara Waterkeepers is doing a “Spring Sweep” and “Great Lakes Cleanup” on April 23rd in the Buffalo area and along the Lake Erie shoreline, with additional cleanup events throughout the warmer months. These are just a few upcoming spring cleaning opportunities in the area.

While it can be nice to participate in larger scale cleanups, there is no reason one can’t choose to enjoy a quick walk, or a morning or evening stroll, with a bucket and a dream of a less trashy world. So, grab your bucket and grabby tool and have confidence that your small act of civic contribution can add up nicely with the efforts of others to equal a more pleasant community and ecology for everyone and everything!

The Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission to preserve and enhance the water quality, scenic beauty and ecological health of the lakes, streams, wetlands and watersheds of the Chautauqua region. For more information, call 716-664-2166, visit chautauquawatershed.org and follow CWC on Facebook and Instagram.