Bottled Water Follies

Visit #953, Saturday 16 May 15, 9:50AM-12:10PM, 6.6 miles.
Temps in the low 60's, cloudy with abating showers.

A sincere thanks for Paul Bernier, who joined me this week in keeping Hubbard Park spiffy.

Syndicated columnist Jill Richardson recently criticized a new trend, BOXED water. I hope you'll take a few minutes to read it.

I don't blame her.

As a result of her column, I got the bright idea to take a little highly unscientific survey-what kind of problems with bottled water are we seeing in Connecticut? I conducted my survey by counting all the discarded bottled water containers Paul and I could pick up in one session collecting trash in Hubbard Park. We would walk the road from the park all the way to Castle Craig, then hike the trails back to the park.

Let's start. Paul scored the first find...

By the time we reached the water treatment plant, we'd added enough other trash to leave a bag hanging.

Further up the road by a pull-off, I found our first Find of the Week, a discarded patio umbrella.

In that same pull-off area, we found the picked over spine and fur from a deer. Look closely (not that you want to!) and you'll see maggots feasting on the leftover bones.

Well now, back to the bottle count.

Find of the Week Number Two was a long rusted chainguard from a bicycle.

Paul's Find of the Week Number 3 was Nathan Ruscito's debit card. I actually had to create a Twitter account to contact Nate to see if he wanted his card back, which I doubt otherwise I wouldn't have found it in the woods. So as a result I'm all twittered up now, folks! Tweet me, baby!

P.S. Nate responded to my tweet, saying, "Destroy the shit out of it."

Back to the bottles.

Sometimes I'd find the label but no bottle, reducing the actual count...bummer.

We reached the fork to East Peak/West Peak and left a full pair of bags there for later pick up.

We were hardly done in the bottle department. We cracked open another pair of bags.

Paul then recovered Find of the Week Number Four, a car radiator.

I'm hoping I can get the Meriden Parks Department to pick this up along with the extra bags and the umbrella. As long as they have the photos, they should be able to find everything. Below is the last stretch of road to reach Castle Craig.

We didn't go too crazy cleaning up around Castle Craig; I'd already done that last week so it was in pretty good shape. Paul and I hiked the the trails heading down back toward Hubbard Park.

And you thought we were done finding bottles?!

Reaching the park, we dropped off our last trash bags.

No, I don't get the appeal of bottled water when tap water, even if filtered at your tap, is much cheaper. Also, those bottles are purchased with a 5 cent deposit on each bottle. People are essentially tossing away a nickel with each bottle.

And as a public service, I leave you with a link to all you need to know about Connecticut's Bottle Bill.