After my daughter made me stop the car to pick up trash so an animal wouldn't eat it, I realized adults need to clean up their own mess
- My daughter made me realize the trash around us when she was a toddler and would pick it up.
- One day she made me stop the car to grab a deflated balloon so an animal wouldn't eat it.
My 5-year-old daughter Kai scurried around a bus stop in Finland, picking up candy wrappers and plastic bottles and dumping them in the waste bin. We were visiting family, and here she was, cleaning the sidewalk. I simultaneously wanted to shout, "Good for you!" and "Don't pick that up!"
Before Kai was born, I recycled, voted for environmental candidates, and tried to reduce my carbon footprint. But Kai helped me see the trash I was stepping over each day. When she was a toddler, she grabbed a tissue from a parking lot, which I pried out of her hand, saying, "No. That's yucky."
She kept picking up trash
At home, we talked about cool animals and their habitats, and one of our favorite picture books was "Bag in the Wind," an ecological parable that followed a plastic bag after it blew out of a landfill. While Kai couldn't verbalize the disconnect between my words and actions, she could feel it. She persisted in picking up trash, and I began carrying hand sanitizer. When we attended a climate march, she took a basket and removed litter as we walked.
It didn't surprise me that she threw away rubbish in Finland — nor was I surprised at the passing strangers who smiled at us. Adults always appreciated her environmental actions. When Kai started a roadside cleanup near her kindergarten, adults were again impressed. But what I've come to feel is ambivalence.
People praised her
Our project began when Kai spotted a deflated balloon in an empty field. We had recently read about how animals can mistake balloons for food. "Stop," Kai said, and I pulled over. As we picked up the balloon, we could see the whole field was covered in trash. "Can we come back and clean it?" Kai asked.
Each Friday, we picked up beer cans and cardboard boxes, Styrofoam containers, and plastic water bottles. After we filled two bags, we stopped for the day. The next week, we cleaned the same 30 feet, picking up a familiar assortment of trash and returning home hot and overwhelmed. Our arms were scratched from brush, and it seemed we would never get ahead of those who threw trash out car windows.
When I posted photos of Kai's project on Facebook, friends praised her efforts. They — like me — admired her determination to create a better world. So why did I feel something close to irritation?
Why are we making kids clean up our mess?
It had nothing to do with her cheering squad, I realized, and everything to do with the planet we adults are leaving for children. Plastic is not easily recycled, and plastic pollution is so ubiquitous that microplastics have been discovered in the placentas of babies. We have created a mess. Children picking up our trash is not a feel-good story. It's the opposite of one.
When the pandemic hit, our cleanup project ended, and we haven't restarted it. Kai is now in third grade, and on Fridays, she's usually biking with friends after school, which is as it should be. She's still passionate about the environment and hopes to become a marine biologist one day and study sharks. She has many years to decide, years in which adults will hopefully get serious about solving plastic pollution. We shouldn't leave children with a diminished planet and expect them to save it.
The last time our family was at the beach, Kai played while I walked along the shore, picking up golf balls, a broken hair dryer, plastic bottles, and polypropylene wrappers. Most memorably, though, Kai spotted an octopus, and our family watched it move from one tidal pool to another, a reminder of a magical world worth protecting.
Sari Fordham is a writer, professor, and environmental activist. She is the author of a monthly newsletter, "Cool It: Simple Steps to Save the Planet," which she designed for busy people who care about the climate crisis.