Today we were the 4th team to find a new cache in the East Valley. When we got to the site, I was surprised to find 2 very old crumpled pop cans, a straw, an old mostly rolled up piece of tin foil, and a cracked and beaten plastic cup right at the cache site! I mean from the position that you had to find and retrieve the cache, these items were right at your feet...and as you sat to log your find you couldn't help but notice them. They aren't there any more, we picked them up and put them in the garbage can that was about 110 feet from the cache.

Then we also decided to visit a nearby .17 miles away cache that we had previously found as there was a travel bug there and we were going to pick it up if it was still there (it wasn't). We found some bags in the cache along with a copy of the Cache In/Cache Out Cache. We grabbed a bag and filled it up coming out of there. Again, a lot of this trash was not hard to find and has had to have been passed up by the numerous finders of the cache. There is more trash there, we ran out of room.

When Geocachers got bad press in the Republic, we were quick to point out that we practice Cache In/Trash Out to formulate our argument we had a stewrdship for the land and sites . Also I noticed in the informal survey that was on this site that most everyone either put that they "Usually" or "Always" practice Cache In/Trash Out. It would seem from my exerience today that this may not be true.

I have seen evidence of Cache In/Trash Out. The Lake Front Property Cache is a good example. In the logs that I read of the cache it was said that there was a lot of trash in the area, and cachers had mentioned picking some of it up. By the time I got there to find the cache, ther was NO trash left...except the cache container which in it's position could have been mistaken for trash. In this case I say we did a great job!!! Bravo to those who picked up the trash.

I'm not one to say that I always at a cache site go around for 100 yds in each direction and pick up what I find...heck, at some cache sites I've been to you couldn't possibly clean it all up. But I have and do stop to pick up trash that is at my feet or that I walk right next to on my route to get to and from the cache. I think this is logical and realistic expectation

My point is that at least 3 Cache Teams (who are pretty experienced teams) and the Cache hider of the new cache had to have seen this trash...being as it was located where you had to be to retrieve the cache. Why wasn't it picked up? Are we in that much of a hurry to get to the next cache?

I believe in the light of some of the bad press that we have received that we need to take care and pay attention to our claims. While I'm not saying that we need to pack out a pick-up truck load of trash at these sites, a bag or part of a bag if that is all the trash that is in the area shouldn't be too hard. I would certainly say that taking the 10 seconds to pick up the trash that was at my feet at this particular cache site was not too hard.