Governor Phil Scott held his weekly briefing today at a school in Montpelier to encourage students to participate in Vermont’s Green Up Day on Saturday.
Vermont holds its statewide Green Up Day annually on the first Saturday in May. Scott, a Republican, told U32 students that the tradition has been around since before some of their parents were born.
“Governor Deane Davis kicked off Green Up Day back in 1970. It was really a pretty big deal back then. They even closed the interstate down for a few hours and thousands and thousands of volunteers were picking up trash along our roadsides,” Scott noted. “Fast forward to today, Green Up Day has become an important part of what makes Vermont so special.”
Green Up Vermont Executive Director Kate Alberghini told students that it’s a way for Vermonters to act on improving natural spaces.
“Fun fact. Green Up Day is actually one week older than Earth Day! So 55 years later we’re still picking up litter,” lamented Alberghini. ”The reality is there is too much waste. A lifestyle of convenience has more than taken hold and even though it’s not our litter the right thing to do is to pick it up for the good of our planet.”
Green Up Vermont holds an annual contest for students across the state to submit videos, jingles, art and writing that reflects the importance of the effort and the state’s environment. Grand prize winner Ella Thomas, a junior at U32, created this year’s Green Up Day poster art, which depicts forest animals picking up trash.
“The piece shows an ecosystem, a community, coming together to green up Vermont. I do not in fact think that fox kits should be taking responsibility for our trash or that squirrels should be carrying away our litter,” explained Thomas. “I think we as humans need to be taking responsibility for the destruction we’ve caused. I think that is a big part of Green Up Day: responsibility. We are humans inhabiting Vermont and by doing so we’re affecting the wilderness. I think the least we can do is get outside once a year and devote a few hours to cleaning up our home.”
Students had a number of questions for Governor Scott about Green Up Day including what sorts of things and how much has been picked up in one day.
“I’d take my whole cabinet out and we would do a section from like Montpelier all the way to Waterbury. We’d split up and then it was a contest like who could pick up the most?” related Scott. “I don’t know how much in weight but we would have probably a 16-yard load of trash and rubbish and so forth that we’d found on the side of the road by the end of the day.”
A 15-cubic-yard dumpster load holds 80 to 100 33-gallon trash bags, totaling 1 to 2 tons.
