Picking Up Trash Mysteries on the Greenway

WCG holds frequent volunteer events to clean up trash and remove invasive plants from the Watertown-Cambridge Greenway. You can learn more about upcoming events here. Below, we're highlighting one volunteer's first-hand experience to bring more awareness to these events and hopefully inspire others to join! 

Instead, I headed north from the intersection, hoping to catch up with a volunteer along the way. (Being chronically late also means chronically unprepared; I didn't have protective gloves or a bag for trash).

This is the second year the Watertown Community Gardens has run a Greenway cleanup event, and the second time I've attended. It was a much nicer day compared to last year, sunny but still cool; much better than last year’s overcast gray ominously threatening a shower at any moment.

It also seemed like there were more volunteers this year, just from the number of people I spotted with trash bags. Which turned out to be correct– I found out later there were about 60 people out volunteering! I passed a number of them, working in groups or solo, as I ventured up the path.

Kids with a parent, couples, lone trash rangers, all united in a common goal. And they were doing a great job; I didn't see a single cigarette butt or plastic wrapper while I was scouring the northern Greenway for someone with spare gloves or an extra trash bag.

I did pass by a couple of filled bags, waiting patiently for DCR pickup, and... a skillet?

(DCR stands for “Department of Conservation and Recreation,” and they officially manage the upkeep of the Greenway, and, among other things, removal of trash. You can learn more on their website.)

One of my favorite parts of cleanup is the weird trash you find. Well– okay, obviously I'm not a fan of trash on the Greenway. That's the whole point of picking it up. But I am morbidly fascinated by how did this get here and why.

I can't help imagining why someone would throw a skillet away. Did they make the amateur mistake of washing the seasoning off, panic, think they ruined the skillet, and try to hide it by throwing it into the bushes on the Greenway? Who are you, skillet-thrower? What is your story?

The abandoned skillet reminded me a bit of those archaeological stories of 3,000 year old pots thrown into the trash pile with burned cheese at the bottom . I guess no matter how much civilization marches forward, people are still going to hide their cooking disasters by throwing them into the woods.

While I was pondering abandoned skillets and burned cheese, I passed a nice young man carrying a large bag of trash, who stopped dead in his tracks to look at me.

(This artistic rendition does not really resemble him, for his privacy. And a little because I have a hard time with faces.)

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

Do I know him? Should I know him? Where would I know him from? I don't go anywhere or do anything?

And that's how I met B (name redacted for his privacy, and not because I forgot it again) from my Intro to Woodworking class at Watertown Highschool. A class I'd been taking twice a week for three months.

He also had to ask my name, which made me feel marginally better about not recognizing him immediately. In my (and B's) defense, it's very hard to make polite introductions over the sound of saws, sanders, the dust collector, and everyone's enthusiastic hammering.

B also very helpfully offered me his spare gloves, so I had one half of the necessary equipment to begin trash collecting. Nice!

From there, I was able to find someone with a spare bag, and also notified Cindy (one of the Watertown Community Gardens board members organizing the event) that I was here, so she could note me down as a participant, and that I agreed to the safety waiver. 

Finally, I was ready to begin collecting trash!

That part's a lot less interesting to write about; I wandered around in gullies and up embankments, searching for trash that prior volunteers hadn't already picked up. The people who'd come before me on that section of the path had done an excellent, thorough job, but there’s always something left behind under a bush or buried in the grass.

In a way, though, it’s my other favorite part of trash cleanup, besides meeting people (again) and the strange mysteries you find. As your bag slowly fills with debris, it becomes a tangible reminder of how much your effort weighs. “Cleaning up the environment,” “community involvement,” “collective action”-- they can feel abstract, at times. Never worthless, but sort of lofty and ephemeral, ideals you can dream about but never touch. But it’s hard to forget the weight of what you’re doing when you’re carrying real, physical pounds of change in your hands, and adding to it with every bottle, bag, and…

... bike tire?

My very own weird trash! Who abandoned you, bike tire? Did you fail at just the wrong moment, and they threw you up the embankment in a fit of rage? What’s your story?

Pondering the mystery of the bike tire, I set my feet firmly, and pulled.

And… gave up because the tire was actually somehow hooked around a large PVC pipe fully buried in the ground.

I do not know how that was possible. I was not equipped to dig it out with my hands, so I left it for someone with better equipment, or more patience

Farewell, mysterious bike tire. I was not strong enough to draw you from the earth.

However, once I was up on the embankment with the immovable bike tire, I noticed a bunch of small trash that wasn't really visible from the path because of the slope. I distinctly remember a green bottle, some wrappers, a few bags that had blown into the fence.

Picking those up lead me to even more unseen trash that had blown down the back of the embankment and up against the fence, including a bunch of old paintcans, rusting away. No idea who would throw those down an embankment, or what secrets they were hiding, but I did have a fun time thinking about it.

Maybe they were surprising someone by renovating their room...

Maybe they broke a wall while their spouse was out of town and had to emergency repair it...

Maybe they were moving out and had to repair and repaint a wall to save their security deposit...

The possibilities are endless with weird trash.

And then I looked up, and saw them.

Two suitcases?

I've spent the rest of the week puzzling over these. I have no idea. I can't even begin to come up with a story for why these were both abandoned up an embankment on the Greenway. I have so many questions.

As I was lost in pondering those (okay– as I was rolling up a piece of rubber mat to put in the bag) a little orange DCR truck pulled up to pick up some of the bagged trash waiting by the roadside. I ferried the suitcases down to the DCR worker, and the two suitcases drove off into the sunset; another unsolved trash mystery.

I didn't realize until he'd driven away that he'd taken my bag, too.

So my trash collection as part of the second-annual Watertown Community Gardens Watertown-Cambridge Greenway Cleanup came to an unintended end.

But I’m already looking forward to the next cleanup event– and it’s not even a year away!

The next Greenway event is on  May 10th, 2025  . This time, rather than trash removal, we’ll be focusing on  invasive plant removal. Which has fewer trash mysteries, but is no less satisfying– I promise! If you want to help the community, steward the environment, or just have an enjoyable afternoon ripping plants up, you can sign up to be notified when the RSVP form is live here!

You can also sign up for our newsletter, to read more about what the Watertown Community Gardens does, and when we’re doing it!

Written and illustrated by M. Ingram, March 2025.