A Bellingham Volunteer Success Story
Let me start by saying THANK YOU for the incredible response to the recent post, "Preparation as an act of love."
In it, I shared Bellingham local Beth Hartsoch's wisdom and reflection about her husband Jake's tragic accident, his end of life preparation, and the search & recovery mission.
The response was vast, humbling, and very much appreciated, and ranged from heartfelt sympathy to words of deep thanks for the reminder and links to get those simple, free, quality-of-life-for-your-family saving documents signed and in order.
If you still haven't done so, consider this a follow-up reminder!
This post fits solidly into the realm of "there's a first time for everything!"
And also, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! :)
Essentially, my blog -- THIS blog -- has been hijacked!
Hey, I get it!
You and the other readers this goes out to are THE -- or certainly 'among' -- the most loyal, consistent, and responsive readers of any blog posts I've analyzed data for!
And one of our readers, my buddy Glenn Biernacki, who is probably a genius, is certainly a polymath, and somehow manages to straddle the worlds of:
Professional computer programmer
Commercial fisherman
Dad, and...
Passionate volunteer who puts in more hours per year than I'll probably put in over the next decade...
...took it upon himself to jump on the "Insider's View Newsletter" train and publish his awesome insights!
Imagine my face when this banner hit my email inbox:
Glenn's newsletter brought the biggest smile (and a hardy LOL) the second I opened it.
Then I started reading, and lemme' tell ya:
IT'S AN AWESOME PIECE OF WRITING!
The title of "Trash Talk" refers to his years-long pursuit of walking Bellingham's City streets -- namely Roeder Ave. and Squalicum Way -- to hand-pick, hand-bag, hand-CLEAN-UP the endless inventory of nastly ol' human-generated litter!
Glenn opens his newsletter with: "When trash is talked in the greater Bellingham area, it's typically been vocalizing a human preeminence over another.
This newsletter is not about that. It is about trash, picked along our roads and creeks."
"332 Bags of trash picked last 3 years .... 113 picked in 2024 .... Too easy." --Glenn B.
Here's an inspiring photo collage Glenn included, showing the fruits of his labor from his ongoing efforts through December 31, 2024:
Keep in mind, Glenn isn't romping all over the City in his efforts to gather the bags above.
That's the shocking and disturbing part, as he writes:
"These bags of trash have mostly come from the Squalicum Creek/Harbor area.
Squalicum Creek Trash is the manifestation of consumerism, homelessness, drug addiction, well intentioned recycling, modern packaging, windblown industrial byproducts, busy commercial load traffic, and almost quaint passenger car litter."
Glenn makes it easy for any of us!
He writes:
"If you want to pick trash on public property, Bellingham now has a program where they will provide you with tools for cleaning up litter (bags, gloves, litter grabbers) and manage the disposal of your filled bags.
If you're interested in participating in the program, you can find more information about it here.
I am a big fan, them disposing of picked trash is a game changer....
Always having "City" bags in my truck, means I can play the game anytime...
I see, I pick, I take a pic, I let them know, I'm done."
Not content to just pick trash, Glenn has also been proactive and vocal to two big, continuous, commercial sources of litter along Roeder Ave.
He's written emails to the management of both:
Sanitary Services Company (SSC), and...
Bellingham Cold Storage.
Glenn articulated to them his regular efforts in the adjacent landscapes, the nature of the trash escaping their facilities, and its reappearance following high winds made blatantly obvious by the fact that he had just cleaned the area.
He wrote to them: "My concern has been Squalicum Creek, which dumps into Bellingham Bay, and keeping plastic out of it.
I actually have some experience in this issue as I was , for a time, employed to keep the wetlands area around Recomp clean of plastic blowing out of their facility.
I know it is not easy, doing what you do, in windy Whatcom County."
He made a simple suggestion:
"I think it would be beneficial to have full fencing all along the North side of your property.
The new fencing along the Northwest corner looks great, and not much is getting through it at all.
The Black Berries on the other side are relatively free of blowing plastic.
Glenn shared with me that, in response to his emails, he got the following respective replies:
Bellingham Cold Storage immediately responded and took action.
They shared with Glenn that they held a company meeting, placed new trash containers outside the facility to capture gloves, hair-nets and Covid masks from workers -- which were the key ingredients of the litter Glenn had been seeing.
And voila! Glenn shared that their easy-to-spot litter largely ceased to show up in his regular routes.
Well done, Bellingham Cold Storage!
SSC, however, is a different story.
SSC's CEO replied to Glenn's email, basically dodged the issue, and offered up:
"Most likely the material you are finding is coming from vehicles traveling along Roeder and not necessarily ours.
We will remind our drivers to check their trucks periodically to look for material that may be caught up somewhere on the truck."
Glenn respectfully pushed back, and explained more of what he's been doing, noticing, and watching carefully for years.
He shared Bellingham Cold Storage's effective response, and asked SSC again to simply erect or budget for a fence along their wide-open north side.
SSC never replied after their first "not our problem" email, despite Glenn continuing to email them with photos.
I know SSC does a lot of good for our Community.
Neither Glenn nor I are claiming they're "bad".
This is a localized, accute situation that Glenn has become intimately knowledgeable about during his tremendous contribution of effort, and he is doing his civic duty by bringing it to SSC's attention, because it affects public spaces, Squalicum Creek, and Bellingham Bay's ecology.
Not everyone may realize that SSC isn't a City-owned or public works operation.
It's a private, family-owned and operated, for-profit company that will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2029.
If you'd like to add your voice to the suggestion Glenn made...
That SSC run a simple fence along their north property line and keep their plastic from escaping...
You can reach the CEO Ted Carlson at ted@ssc-inc.com
We can ALL BE SO TRASHY!
Glenn, my thanks to you for giving yourself, your time and energy, and your outreach to help make Bellingham more beautiful!
Thank you to the City of Bellingham for taking a supportive stance in providing bags, gloves, and pick-up services, which is awesome.
You can read about and sign up for the Volunteer Litter Clean-up Program at this link.
And thank you to any businesses who take our aesthetics and ecology seriously.
Let's give Glenn the final word here, since he so brilliantly hijacked the Insider's View newsletter format to launch "Trash Talk."
"BTW, it's a well known fact that picking a 1000 bags of trash is a free ticket to heaven ....
.... I'm a third of the way there."
--Glenn Biernacki
:)
