Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Earth Day 1970 Part 4: Albion, Michigan (CBS News with Walter Cronkite)

- In smaller cities and towns across the country,

it was the young people from schools and colleges

that took the community lead in trying to make Earth Day

the beginning of an environmental crusade.

We have reports on two typical cases. First, Hughes Rudd.

- [Hughes] Albion, Michigan, population fourteen thousand

calls itself Manufacturing City, USA

which is somewhat ambitious. But the town does

have a problem, iron foundries.

And not all of them have installed

adept pollution equipment required by state law.

Albion also the usual look of America,

trash and junk along the roadsides.

Not as much as bigger cities but still too much.

But today is trash Wednesday as the students

at Albion College call it

and people from just about every section

of the community have turned out to clean up their town.

These students are cleaning up a small area

along the Kalamazoo River to make it into a park.

Once the lot is clear, the city has agreed

to make the space into a park.

The clean-up leader is Walt Pomeroy, a geology student

at Albion college.

- [Reporter] So have you organized any demonstrations

or picket lines against the factories that do the polluting?

- No, no demonstrations per say.

We have been able to sit down with the factories

and community members to discuss this

because we're afraid that if we [clears throat] Excuse me.

Picketed the factories that we would actually

turn the community against this

and they have been able to sit down and discuss this

with us as we have been able to on the college campus.

(cans clattering)

- [Reporter] The Albion students may not be demonstrating

but they still managed to make a lot of noise

and it looked like more fun than all that stooping labor

at the vacant lot. The idea is to squash the cans

so they're easier to pack for shipment back to the companies

which made them. These students

are against non-aluminum cans because

they aren't melted down and reused. The aluminum cans

will be sold to a local scrap dealer. (cans clattering)

Those citizens who weren't interested in jumping

up and down in public attacked

the Kalamazoo riverbanks yesterday.

- [Male] Oh man. We need a little help (grunts).

- [Other Male] Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

- [Reporter] And even some of the youngest citizens

of Albion got involved in trash Wednesday.

Kindergartners and first graders

in a predominantly black school started

around the school grounds picking up just about everything

in sight, including a lot of dead leaves.

That wasn't exactly the right idea

but they certainly had the right spirit.

What's this all about? What are you doing?

- (answers inaudibly)

- Huh? Why are you picking up the trash?

(people laughing)

Why are all the children out here picking up trash?

- Because we wanna have our school clean.

- We want our city clean.

- [Reporter] And that about sums it up.

It looks today as though everybody in town

did want to clean up the city.

Hughs Rudd, CBS News Albion Michigan.