Bartram's Garden

Bartram's Garden Schuylkill River Cleanup 
10.4.16

On Tuesday evening, after classes, my boyfriend and I headed across the pond to South Philadelphia for my first Stewardship activity. We arrived in Bartram's Garden, America's oldest living botanical garden, to participate in a river clean up along the Schuylkill river. As the members all arrived, we gathered in a circle to listen for further directions and grabbed a pair of gloves as well as two bags, one for trash and one for recyclables. After that, we broke into about five groups and followed our United By Blue leaders to our spot. We then broke up into groups of two and went on our way to different parts of the river banks and trails to start collecting. I was amazed at the number of bottles and different plastic vesicles were strewn about the waters and how the currents had brought in so much trash. We picked through weeds, woods, trees and bushes for about two hours before we had to drag our full bags up to the meeting spot to be weighed. After everyone had met up again, all the bags were weighed and we got to mingle with the other participants. We were given food courtesy of the Cabot food truck, a sponsor of United By Blue. which consisted of salad, macaroni and cheese, cheese samples and a dessert. As well all enjoyed our meals, we played two group games. The first was to vote on who brought back the strangest piece of garbage, an arrow won but runner up was a catheter bag. The second game was to guess how much trash we had picked up in that two hour span. We managed to pick up almost 5,000 pounds of trash between the fifty or so participants in a short period of time and even then, we felt like we barely made a dent in the amount of trash. Although we had full bags of bottles, cans, Styrofoam and paper products, there was still hundreds of pounds of trash out of reach. It is crazy to think that we only touched a small portion of one single park near the river side and that this amount would be multiplied by millions if we were to clean up the riverbanks in Philadelphia alone. At the end of the even, we all received an aluminum cup as well as a token for one free pair of socks at any United by Blue location. 

At first, I did not really want to participate because I had a ton of other work to get done that night, in the process I was sweating, bleeding and getting hit by tree swatches and branches but at the end, it just seemed worth it. It felt amazing to have an impact at all and I felt a great sense of community with the other group members because we all banded together for a good cause. Reflecting back on the experience, I'm so happy that I did it because it helped me gain a better consciousness of trash and waste in general. There are a lot of places off the shore of oceans, rivers and lakes that are not being cleaned up and those bottles and cans will never disintegrate into the soil. It puts a new perspective on things and opens your eyes to the blatant disregard and disconnect many people in cities have with nature. 






Some reoccurring course concepts I saw during this experience definitely involved the plant, soil and water relationships. This also reminded me of the negative effects of industrialization and the environmental impacts that coastal cities face. This experience also taught me more about civic ecology as well as urban ecological citizenship by way of taking responsibility of my city and realizing that the city is in desperate need of conservation. The energy was flowing through this system so effortlessly and could easily go unnoticed because it all happens behind closed doors per say. The chemicals, producers, consumers and decomposes were all present even when they are doing work on a much smaller scale that meets the eye. It was easy to see that the earth is not self regulating but in a way the currents bring the trash to shore and it feels like nature is asking for us to help clean it up. In this botanical garden we see the ecosystem services at work from provisioning with energy and food, to regulating the pollination and water filtration, to supporting the nutrient cycles, photosynthesis ans soil formation to finally the cultural services of spirituality, recreation and education. Our work almost felt ineffective because it was easy to get overwhelmed by the amounts of trash. Although we all worked hard and recovered almost 5,000 pounds of trash, that park was 45 acres and we barely touched a 10th of it. 





The most difficult aspect of this event was not climbing through bushes and woodland areas, getting bit up by mosquitoes or sweating profusely, the hardest part of this event was thinking about the scope of this issue. It's almost unfathomable to wrap your head around the amount of trash and waste our bodies of water possess. It's disheartening to see mounds of trash in landfills, on streets and on beaches as well as in parks, in rivers and sprinkles all over the ground. This problem did not stem from America, this is a global issue that some people and politicians do not even believe exists. People really need to sit down and realize the impacts of waste, not only trash but carbon emissions and fossil fuels on earth.

One thing I can say that made me uncomfortable was the garden's upkeep versus the surrounding area. The area the garden was in was one that I would feel threatened in after dark. It happens a lot, especially in Philadelphia to see one beautiful, well resourced section next to a completely desolated part of the city. This type of thing can be seen at Temple and its relation to the surrounding areas of North Philadelphia. Not that the park should go to waste, but the income disparities show their true colors at events like these.