WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Karen Pippin and Dolores Thorburn walked along a stretch of Route 4, trash grabbers in hand.
“These little things annoy me,” Thorburn, 76, of Wilder, said as she picked up a small piece of paper on a Friday morning last month.
Pippin, 72, of White River Junction, concurred.
“I don’t understand why people litter,” she said. “There’s trash cans all over the Upper Valley.”
Pippin and Thorburn have been picking up trash along roadways in Hartford nearly every weekday since April. The pair became fast friends years ago when they were both working at Valley Terrace, a senior living facility in White River Junction. After they both recently retired after years working in health care, they decided to start walking together.
It didn’t take long until they noticed an eyesore on their walks: litter. And so they decided to do something about it themselves.
“We might as well,” Pippin said about the decision to start picking it up.
The two have lived in Vermont for decades and don’t like to see litter on the landscape. They invested in rubber gloves, durable trash bags and garbage grabbers. They came up with some ground rules, like not picking up cigarettes, dog poop or anything particularly sharp that could potentially harm them.
“People feel entitled,” Pippin said, as the pair worked their way along Route 4 toward Quechee, a stretch of road they’d cleaned up a handful of days before and collected half a dozen bags of garbage, only to have more litter reappear. “Why are they shooting it out (of their vehicles) when they can bring it home and put it in their trash or go to a gas station? I don’t understand.”
Over the course of two hours, Pippin and Thorburn carefully walked along Route 4, eyes to grassy areas bordering the busy state highway. There were food containers from area co-ops and fast food eateries, coffee cups, zip ties and beer cans.
They’ve noticed that Twisted Tea is the preferred beverage to throw on the roadside.
At one point Thorburn called out “nipper!” and Pippin walked over. “Nipper” is the word they use for the tiny bottles of alcohol that they have found proliferate busier roads.
“No matter how many times we do this, there’s always garbage,” Thorburn said.
Their record is 12 big trash bags in a single morning. Sometimes they leave the trash bags on the roadside if they’re too heavy and then come back later to pick them up in their cars. Occasionally, motorists honk their horns in support or call out their thanks; once someone on the way to the town transfer station picked up their trash bags to take with him.
“We find parts of cars because there’s a lot of accidents around here,” Thorburn said. They make jokes about building a vehicle of their own, singing lines from “One Piece at a Time” by Johnny Cash, or that someone who threw a lottery ticket from a car window actually has winning numbers the pair can cash in on. “We have fun.”
They notice the most litter underneath bridges and overpasses. They return again and again to streets surrounding Hartford High School and the Taft’s Flat area of White River Junction.
They climb over guardrails, but are careful not to go too far. They prioritize their safety over grabbing litter — there’s always going to be more of it, after all. And it is nice to walk with a mission.
“I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in,” Thorburn said.
When it started to get a little hotter and the bags they brought were almost full, Pippin and Thorburn began to make their way back to their cars, completing a full loop.
“I think we’re more aware now,” Pippin said when asked what she’s observed in the months since they started their walks. Even if she’s not actively looking for it, her eyes always seem to spot litter.
“A lot of people aren’t,” Thorburn replied.
But they’re hoping more people will be.
