AUBURN — Exercise, family time and cleaning up — what could be better? Scott and Tammy Rodrigue have made a family tradition of Earth Day sprucing-up.
Tammy Rodrigue said she, Scott and their three sons, Kegan, 12, Reece, 14, and Brodyn, 5, as well as the boys’ hockey friends began around the Rodrigues’ Hotel Road neighborhood at about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.
From there, they moved on to Edward Little High School. Since her sons are also involved in track and field, the crew scoured the woods around the track.
“We’ve been doing this the past few years,” Rodrigue said, once with her church, cleaning up area parks and making them more presentable.
This year, their haul included tires, toys, bottles, stuffed animals, fishing poles and a tennis racket with a tree growing through it. “We found a lot of treasures,” Rodrigue said.
Among the stranger things recovered in Tuesday’s cleanup — a Pinocchio glass from Burger King and an office chair seat — just the seat.
Rodrigue said the crew filled 12 to 13 trash bags with items, including $6 worth of returnable bottles and cans.
Returnables were not the only cash to be found among the leaves. Rodrigue said Kegan found a $1 bill this year and a $20 Canadian bill last year.
Rodrigue said she was struck by the number of plastic cups, Dunkin’ Donuts cups and plastic debris of all kinds littering the ground, and the more she picked up, the more she found.
“We could have spent three whole days doing it,” Rodrigue said, hoping outings like this will instill in her sons the idea that trash needs to be thrown away or recycled, not tossed in the streets.
Next year, Rodrigue said, she would like to get her sons’ hockey and track teams out for an even larger-scale cleanup.
dmcintire@sunjournal.com
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- Kegan Rodrigue, 12, left, shows his schoolmate and hockey teammate Dominic Priola, 12, the hard plastic debris Rodrigue found in the woods surrounding Edward Little High School during the Rodrigue family and friends’ Earth Day cleanup Tuesday in Auburn. “We’re getting physical activity and it’s a good family event,” said Tammy Rodrigue, Kegan’s mother, who was helping her husband, three sons and their friends pick up trash. The group started in their neighborhood around Taylor Pond in Auburn and moved to the high school in the afternoon. In the three hours they were out, they collected 10 to 11 bags of trash and two bags of returnable bottles.
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- Scott and Tammy Rodrigue and their family and friends collected trash and returnables Tuesday around Edward Little High School in Auburn for their annual Earth Day tradition.
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- Tammy Rodrigue of Auburn picks up a tennis racket found by her husband, Scott, as they cleaned up around Eward Little High School in Auburn with their three sons and their sons’ friends Tuesday.
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