My 4-year-old daughter got to spend time playing with her friends at Brookside Park on Tuesday afternoon.

It was Elizabeth and her ACPC classmates' reward for picking up trash at the popular city park. Her teachers thought it was a practical way for the students to take what they'd learned about environmental stewardship on Earth Day and put it into practice. Picking up dirty bottle caps, candy wrappers and juice box straws is about as tangible of a lesson as one can get.

Yet, it's one that seems not to have been learned by many people along the way. Too many of our open spaces, ditches and waterways are strewn with litter, some of it there accidentally; too much of it dumped and discarded deliberately.

I, as much as anyone, greatly appreciate Tribune Editor Dave Kraemer's efforts to remind us of how messy we are by organizing a community-wide clean-up day each spring. But Stash the Trash isn't something we should do once a year; instead, it should be a way of life. Littering is something we just shouldn't do.

Somehow we've failed to teach recent generations of school-aged children that good citizens have good manners. Dumping an unwanted microwave oven in a ditch along a gravel road or throwing fast-food wrappers out the window of a SUV zipping down the interstate isn't respectful of the environment or our fellow citizens. We need to quit being slobs, and we need to teach our children not to be either.

Children shouldn't have to be rewarded for doing something that's right. But if extra time swinging and going down a slide can help drive home lessons about caring for the earth and being responsible citizens, we should be taking our children to the park more often.

Todd Burras is outdoors editor for The Tribune. E-mail him at tburras@amestrib.com.