Clean Fairfax is proud to introduce Litter Free Virginia, an initiative to fight for litter prevention legislation across the state of Virginia! At its core, Litter Free Virginia is a coalition of people and organizations (non-profits, businesses and more) that are frustrated with litter and waste management issues, and want to develop and support policies that help solve these problems. Clean Fairfax has long dreamed of coordinating a coalition that attacks litter at its source, and that day has finally come!

In its inaugural year, #LitterFreeVA will focus on legislation that decreases the use of single-use bags, especially plastic bags. This will likely take the form of a local-option bag fee of $0.05. In future years, this initiative will focus on other aspects of the litter issue. Don’t worry — we haven’t forgotten about bottles, cigarette butts, fast food containers, etc. But for 2019, it’s single-use bags.

While we’re hard at work developing good policy, you have a BIG part to play in #LitterFreeVA. Here are ways that you can contribute (full details found here):

• Document litter in your community – Do you regularly snag selfies? Do you take your avocado toast on a photoshoot before you dig in? If so, this may be the perfect task for you. We’ve spoken to legislators, and they need photographic proof of the litter issues we’re having. Consequently, a main focus this year is to document Virginia’s litter problems using the hashtag #LitterFreeVA. This is super easy. If you walk upon a littered area, take a photo, upload it to Twitter or Instagram, and tag us using #LitterFreeVA. We then collect these photos using a hashtag aggregator! Bonus points if you add location (including zip code if possible) as well as a bit of colorful (but positive) commentary. Want to see the photos we’ve collected thus far? Go to our front page and scroll down!
• Contact your representatives – Your local state senators and representatives have a lot to do. They can’t keep track of every issue, so it’s on you to let them know that this is an issue you care about! Click here to find your local rep’s contact information. Please note that representatives will only listen to their own constituents. Do not waste time contacting a rep that’s not your own. If you really want to put pressure on a representative outside your locality, convince citizens within that locality to contact their rep! For talking points and sample emails, please click here.

The website should help guide you every step of the way, but please contact us if you have any questions or if you are looking to become more involved in this initiative! A really easy way to keep up with what we’re doing is to sign up for email alerts. We promise never to spam you.

It can be difficult to see the good in this rough and tumble world of conservation. There are so many things that need improving, so many people that need help. But sometimes we need to stop and smell the roses. What roses, you say? Today’s rose is Fairfax County Public Works and Environmental Services, and especially Fairfax County Stormwater!

This fall, Fairfax County is being awarded a “Gold Level in Program Management” and “Silver Level in Innovation” by the Water Environment Federation. Managing stormwater is incredibly difficult for any municipality, and it is a thankless job. The only time anyone thinks about stormwater is when it’s in their yards or streets. We have been working with Stormwater for the past two years on outreach and education efforts and thoroughly enjoy our partnership. There’s always improving to do, but it’s important to recognize that Fairfax County has put together a dedicated and talented team to tackle these issues. Congratulations to the stormwater team and all the partners that help implement the county’s MS4 program!

Recycling can be… Complicated. Frustrating. Expletive inducing? Every city and county has a different set of recycling guidelines depending on infrastructure, haulers and local policy. This can create real confusion for citizens who are just trying to do good. In Fairfax County, we have a dozen or so haulers, all with their own requirements. That’s a lot of conflicting messages. We love Fairfax County Environment Facebook page’s effort to share what is and isn’t recyclable, but many residents aren’t serviced by the county. Our own website on recycling is, well, admittedly a bit lacking because of the complex nature of the issue. We’re working on it.

In our opinion, the best solution to this issue is probably a search plug-in that tells you if an item is recyclable after you enter the name of the item as well as which disposal company you use. This will take intensive ground-truthing and coordination, so please be patient while we develop that.

Until then, courtesy of Sally Carter (who has gone great lengths to figure this out), enjoy this awesome list of FFX County Recycling Guidelines! Note that it was assembled with guidance from the following sources:

• The county’s Public Works and Environmental Services’ Index of Residential Materials and the “The Fairfax Recycler” e-newsletter
• American Disposal Services’ Acceptable Recycling Materials and the information they share during tours of their facility in Manassas.

Also, a shout out to MOM’s and Whole Foods, both of which have wonderful recycling programs of their own.

We all do it, probably on a hourly/daily basis. There’s a fast food cup nestled on the bed of grass next to the sidewalk, or a Snickers wrapper blowing down the street towards the cul-de-sac. You shake your head disapprovingly, but walk by without picking it up. You think, “I’m not touching that — who knows where that piece of trash has been? Besides, it’s just a drop in the bucket.”

While we sympathize, we can’t stress this more: organized cleanups aren’t enough. They aren’t! Despite a burgeoning emphasis on a decreased use of plastics, displaced trash via littering or otherwise will continue to be a NoVA issue for the foreseeable future. And while cleanups (and education) are a good start, Clean Fairfax wants to encourage you to pick up that piece of litter as you walk to work, school or to the grocery store. This may seem like a endless and futile task, but every piece of trash counts. More importantly, you’re developing a social norm. When your neighbor sees you picking up that cup, they become more likely to do it too. If they see multiple people behaving this way, they become exponentially more likely to do so. If most Fairfax County residents picked trash up when they saw it, our streets and parks would be significantly better off!

Don’t forget to wash your hands afterwards. Don’t forget to schedule a cleanup with us if/when there’s too much litter for your two hands to carry! And finally, don’t forget to email us about habitually littered areas in your community so we can put it on our community map!

Clean Fairfax is excited to announce the development of our Community Map! Found on our website’s homepage, it displays local Fairfax County cleanups (hosted by Clean Fairfax or otherwise) as well as community events and markets. Our website typically garners thousands of unique views a month, and consequently, we believe that this will be a great way to get the word out about local conservation/sustainability education efforts! Please contact Clean Fairfax if you’d like your cleanup or event to be included on the map, or if you know of a litter problem area that we should be aware of! We’re happy to post anything that furthers the protection and restoration of our ecosystems.

Part of Clean Fairfax’s mission is to be a clearinghouse for environmental and sustainability information, and this map will help us better communicate to our audience. We often field questions about local volunteer opportunities, and this will serve as a way to quickly inform those interested. We’re especially interested in mapping the following:

• Cleanup opportunities
• Restoration opportunities
• Other environmental volunteer opportunities
• Local environmental events, including meetings, films, festivals and more!
• Litter hotspots that need attention
• Farmers’ markets, and perhaps other stores that go above and beyond concerning sustainability
• Anything else we haven’t yet thought of that the community finds important!

Do you have an upcoming event or community initiative that you want posted? Email us today!

The Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore strives to create a cleaner and greener future. One of the ways they are accomplishing this is through their trusted friend Mr. Trash Wheel. The Inner Harbor Water Wheel, or “Mr. Trash Wheel,” utilizes old and new technologies to harness the power of water and sunlight to collect litter and debris flowing down the Jones Falls River. “The current of the river provides enough power to turn the wheel, which lifts the trash and debris from the water and deposits it into a dumpster barge. When there isn’t enough water current, a solar panel array provides additional power to keep the machine running. When the dumpster is full, it’s towed away by boat, and a new dumpster is put in place.” (Mr. Trash Wheel, 2018).

Mr. Trash Wheel is extremely popular and has a large following in the Baltimore area. With his personal Twitter account, Mr. Trash Wheel urges citizens to become a member of “The Order of the Wheel”, a secret society with the sole mission of freeing the world of trash. Mr. Trash Wheel allows the Waterfront Partnership to quantify the amount of trash flowing within the area, which makes it easier to show the extent of the pollution problem. Since the creation of Mr. Trash Wheel in 2014, he has picked up 638,262 plastic bottles, 9,391,600 cigarette butts, and 737,025 polystyrene containers. Mr. Trash Wheel has done wonders for the Baltimore community, and we can’t wait to see what else he will do.

Mr. Trash Wheel | Baltimore Waterfront. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from http://baltimorewaterfront.com/healthy-harbor/water-wheel/

Text excerpt from City Nature Challenge Website:

What is the City Nature Challenge?

The City Nature Challenge is an effort to explore urban nature and document biodiversity in cities around the world. Over 60 cities in 14 countries worldwide are planning to participate. It’s time to show how much biodiversity is in our backyards in Fairfax County!

Join the conservation community from April 27-April 30, 2018 to take the City Nature Challenge!

The goal is to engage local residents in the value of urban biodiversity and to collect important data for scientists, land managers, non-profits, and governments about the areas that they help to protect. The Washington, DC metropolitan area includes the District of Columbia, 17 cities/counties in Virginia, 13 cities/counties in Maryland, and Jefferson County, West Virginia. The Baltimore metropolitan area has another set of events as well.

How do I contribute observations?

1. Download the free iNaturalist app to your mobile device and sign up for the City Nature Challenge Washington, DC. Want to learn more about iNaturalist? Clean Fairfax wrote a blogpost about it a few months ago!
2. During April 27-30, 2018, sign up for a local CNC event or take photos of observations of wild plants and animals in your backyard, a park, your walk to school or work—anywhere you find nature.
3. Upload your photos to iNaturalist .
4. Learn more as the iNaturalist community helps identify your observations.

Plastic is plaguing our environment. It comes in all sizes and forms, but the smallest types are called microplastic. Microplastic is defined as “extremely small pieces of plastic debris in the environment resulting from the disposal and breakdown of consumer products and industrial waste.” (US Department of Commerce)

We know that microplastic comes from various sources such as large plastic debris that breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic. Microbeads are a type of microplastic that is very tiny polyethylene plastic manufactured for beauty and health products as an exfoliant. Microbeads are so small that they easily pass through water filtration systems and end up in the ocean, causing a potential threat to ocean life.

The issues with microbeads aren’t new. These products have been appearing in beauty products for over fifty years now, due to natural ingredients being replaced with plastic. The issue with microbeads is still relatively unknown. It wasn’t until 2012 that consumers and companies began to learn about the dangers of microbeads. There currently is not a lot of information on microplastics or how they impact the environment but hopefully that can change with the rise of awareness around this issue. With Former President Barack Obama signing the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, which effectively banned plastic microbeads in cosmetics and personal care products, we can expect to see a decline in microplastic damaging our environment.

US Department of Commerce, N. O. and A. A. (n.d.). What are microplastics? Retrieved March 26, 2018, from https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/microplastics.html

Clean Fairfax is committed to the 5 R’s of sustainability — refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot. Each method has its own purpose and place in the sustainability toolkit. Together, they comprise a way of living that is increasingly being referred to as “zero waste.”  Ideally, zero waste means not creating any waste at all, but more practically, zero waste is a lifestyle in which one adopts steps toward reducing personal waste and minimizing environmental impact. It’s incredibly difficult to achieve a truly zero waste lifestyle, but it’s the effort that makes someone a zero waste aficionado.

Are you interested in joining the zero waste movement? There’s a ton of information on the subject — some of it good and some not so good. We recommend you begin with Reddit’s ZeroWaste sub-reddit. This community is 55,000 people strong and covers just about everything under the umbrella of sustainability. Looking for a one-stop-shop? ZeroWaste’s How Do I Get Started will show you the ropes. Good luck!

In 2018, people understand the need to recycle. We understand that sustainability is important and that rapid change is needed, but little headway has been made. Why is change so difficult? Why do we still litter and refuse to recycle?

The HuffPost explores this phenomenon in the article “The Psychology Behind Why People Don’t Recycle”. In this article, Brian Iacoviello, an assistant psychiatry professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City states, “Recycling is a behavior, much like exercising or eating healthily, people often engage in this behavior less than they should”.

According to a 2011 Ipsos Public Affairs survey, “only half of adults recycle every day, a third tend to recycle less frequently, while 13% admit that they never recycle”. Although there are barriers to recycling in various communities and among different demographics, it doesn’t explain why people don’t make a stronger effort to recycle. Let’s explore a few common reasons for not recycling, and discuss remedies for said attitudes:

“It’s not accessible or it’s inconvenient”

Recycling doesn’t require too much time. We all live busy lives but taking the time to recycle can help make a change. Fairfax County provides a straightforward system for recycling pick up.

Some local governments don’t have a pick up for recycling. We encourage you to talk with your local government to see if a recycling program can be started. You can also research outside programs to see if there is a recycling program in your area.

“I’m not sure what to recycle”

This can be tricky for certain products that don’t fit into a certain category. Fairfax County provides a fantastic guide to figure out what should be recycled and what should be put into the trash. (http://www.fairfaxva.gov/government/public-works/operations-division/refuse-recycling/recycling-guide)

As you recycle, make sure that the products you are recycling are clean and without food residue. Products that aren’t sufficiently clean take more energy to recycle. 

“It won’t make a difference”

Recycling has been proven to save energy, reduce landfills, preserve resources, protect wildlife and help with climate change issues. By taking a brief moment out of your day to recycle, you are making a difference in the world.

You don’t have to make a drastic change in your life to help our planet. Being a little more environmentally cautious can make a drastic change in our environment and our everyday life.