I was raised during the time when we were taught not to “trash” the earth. I remember commercials with the Native American shedding a tear about the pollution in the rivers, open space areas, and national parks. I’ve always been very conscious of my behavior and others around me. I’ve never been afraid to let people know that they dropped trash, even if it was a lit cigarette. Our society needs to know that we want a place to live that is clean, healthy and safe.

In 1986, I was fortunate enough to take a trip to the island of Taiwan to visit my relatives. My family lived in Taipei, the capital, and my mother warned me that it was so dirty that I found out it was known to the world as "Trash Island". During my visit, we visited a beautiful park up in the Mountains at the edge of the city. This was a popular picnic site where the locals and people played in the stream flowing down the mountainside. I was shocked to see in the same stream was trash and diapers floating past the people. I saw a family leave their picnic site with the day’s trash left on the ground behind. I did my best to inform the family that this was not acceptable and made them take the trash out with them.

20 years later in 2006, I visited Taipei again for family reasons. I was shocked to see the city streets clean, and no trash anywhere. People were outside enjoying their clean city without masks. Most noticeable was when I got into trouble for throwing a fruit seed in the trash at my aunt’s house. She showed me the compost shoot for any food scraps. She also informed me that they receive big fines for not properly sorting their trash. This is when it came to me, Taiwan cleaned up their island and city in 20 years, and created healthy, happy and safe communities, and we in the U.S. still can’t even recycle correctly.

I realized the need to educate our community about the impact of pollution in our community and our environment. We also need to work with the city government and elected officials to implement sustainable ordinances and create a positive change.

We need to get back to basics, grow gardens, and create urban forest for sequestration and our native and migrating species. Give back to our community and make sustainable changes.

• Tina Matthias

These wonderful people have resuced over 2,500 pounds of edible food from going into the landfill!