Wild Keepers Impact Day {February}

I shared a couple weeks ago about the Wild Keepers program I am honored to be a part of. In case you didn't get a chance to read that post yet, let me give you a brief rundown of the program. It isn't your normal ambassador program. It isn't focused pushing products or getting a brand more publicity; it's about getting out there and doing something! It's about leaving this place better than we found it! It's about making a difference and inspiring others to do the same!

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One of the "requirements" of the relationship is that you participate in monthly "Impact Days" (because, remember, the main focus of the Wild Keepers program is helping the environment). The stipulations for an Impact Day are simple:

1. Go outdoors
2. Pick up trash
3. Share your impact

There are so many locations that could use a little extra love, so I am stoked that this gives us that extra nudge to get outside and help leave an area better than we found it. (Because, let's be real, sometimes activities like picking up other people's trash are the first to fall off the calendar when we are overwhelmed with the rest of life.)

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The first place we decided to hit up to help was a nearby climbing spot where the hubby likes to go. The last couple times the hubby and I have been over there, it made us super sad to see how much trash we saw blowing around the boulders.

We took one extra large trash bag and two grocery bags (thinking we could put the recyclable stuff in the smaller bags and the trash in the bigger one. Little did we know we'd fill up all of the bags in less than a half an hour and not even detect our impact. The hubby commented that we could fill up a garbage bag on the daily and people would still probably never even notice. Apparently the climbing spot seems to be quite the party place "after hours" because we ended up carrying out tons of bottles (both broken and whole), spray paint cans, food wrappers, clothes and just general trash.

This was about half way into our clean-up... And we didn't have to veer too far off the path to grab it all.

Lucky for us (saying this half sarcastically), we actually found more bags while we were cleaning up so we filled those too!

When we got home we weighed everything and it was over 23 pounds... TWENTY THREE POUNDS OF TRASH! And it literally took us about twenty minutes to grab what we did (had we had more bags we would've been able to get more).

He sort of looked like Santa with his sack... too bad it was filled with trash and not toys for good girls and boys!

I'll be honest, the amount of trash was very disheartening and frustrating, but although we may not be able to physically pick it all up ourselves, hopefully our efforts are somewhat felt and maybe help encourage others to help out too!

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When was the last time you helped with a clean up effort?