PLATTSBURGH — SUNY Plattsburgh student volunteers removed 100 pounds of garbage from the Saranac River Trail behind campus April 12.
Garrett Monette, a senior, led his peers in a cleanup focused on the shoreline of the river from Seltzer Road to the area behind Clinton Dining Hall.
The collected refuse included plastic litter, beer bottles, cigarette butts and other household items, including a pint of bleach. Other large objects included wood debris and an old metal scooter, but a majority of the collected items were single-use plastics, according to Monette.
Each volunteer started with one bag, and some filled a second. By the end of the cleanup, they amassed 12 full bags, although some volunteers threw them away before the final count.
Monette, born and raised in Plattsburgh, said he was tired of seeing so much garbage during his walks on the trail.
“I would always see that there would be so much garbage collected in those forests, and especially now after the snow melts,” he said. “I just hated seeing it.”
He felt he needed to do something because nobody else will.
“I want to make that impact. I want to actually do something instead of just, you know, complaining about how bad something is,” he said.
He contacted the school to coordinate a deposit location and put flyers up around campus. He was joined by seven other volunteers for over five hours to clean a portion of the trail on campus.
Monette said he lives by the motto “action, not words” and encourages anyone who wants to envisions a “better future” to start making changes.
“Nothing changes if nothing changes. That garbage will continue to sit on the side of the road if someone doesn’t clean it up, and I think efforts like this are pretty essential in, you know, helping make that little incremental change in the community that we need so we can help build healthier, safer communities for everybody,” he said.
The goal of the clean up was to protect the river and community from harmful pollutants.
Monette emphasized even a small effort can have a large impact.
“Picking up that trash prevents all those pollutants from just entering the water and polluting the Saranac and … I shouldn’t underplay it, but that small impact of doing that can really have a big impact on the water quality and just the general environmental health of that area,” Monette said.
Monette is a political science major who wants to pursue a master’s degree in public health.
“It’s my belief that you can’t have a healthy community if the environment isn’t healthy,” he said. “If you’re drinking polluted water, if you’re breathing dirty air, then you’re not going to have a healthy community.”
Monette also runs Unitary America, a local non-partisan organization that focuses on environmentally sustainable projects and encourages positive stewardship.
This clean up was not associated with the organization, but Unitary America will host a trash clean up along the Saranac River Trail on May 2 from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. by the footbridge located at the end of George Angell Drive.
All interested community members and college students are welcome.
“It’s open to all community members. We have the supplies, we have the drop off point, so we want to encourage as many people as possible, you know. If they really want to help out, they really want to help out their environment and help out their community, then they definitely should,” Monette said.
For more information on Unitary America and May’s event, call 518-303-7214 or visit unitaryamerica.org.