After work last Friday, I went over to a friend’s house to pick something up. It was raining a bit, but his house is only five or six blocks away, so I decided to walk rather than drive. Besides, I had been sitting behind a desk all day and thought the exercise might do me good. So, I put the dog on the leash and out the door we went.

I should have driven, because if I had been traveling by car I probably would not have noticed all the pollution and trash that I saw and I’d be feeling a little better about the environmental state of the neighborhood.

At about one minute into the trip, I came across a sizeable oil slick left by a car with (what appeared to be) a serious leak. A few minutes after that, I came upon the overgrown yard of a foreclosed property. A few feet from the curb was a black trash bag half filled with who knows what and, closer to the house, was a tipped-over trashcan spilling its contents out onto the grass. Then, about a minute or two after that, I came upon a metal folding chair lodged in a storm drain.*

Now, when it comes to the environment, I’m not exactly Al Gore. I drive a truck; my youngest daughter wears disposable diapers; and my family and I use about as much water, electricity and natural gas as you might expect. In short, I’m no environmental hero. But a folding chair in a storm drain? We can do better than that…can’t we?

We can. On Saturday, local high school student Caitlyn Hutchison organized an Earth Day event at Duvall Field in which volunteers rebuilt/repaired two rain gardens and cleaned up in and around the site. I’d like to take this opportunity to say thanks to Caitlyn for organizing the event and to those who took the time to lend a hand. It’s nice to see people pitching in and giving their time and effort to improve our city.

It also helps to be reminded that, as Caitlyn put it, “people have to step up,” and take care of their local environment.

She’s right. We do need to step up, and as my brief trip around the neighborhood showed me on Friday evening, there are a lot of places right here in our own backyard that we can step to. Unfortunately, Earth Day 2012 isn’t for another 363 days. Should we wait, or should we try to make “Every Day is Earth Day” more than just a slogan?

If you’d like to help improve the local environment, consider contacting the College Park’s Committee for a Better Environment.

* Although I can’t figure out why someone would put a folding chair in a storm drain, I do wonder if it was placed there on purpose.

Smith is a resident of north College Park. He (occasionally) blogs at www.ncpinformant.com.