Large trash bags were littering the side of the roads in Rochester this past weekend, and that’s a good thing.
On April 24, the Rochester Women’s Club’s annual Spring Cleanup event in honor of Earth Day (which this year was on April 23) sent out around 50 volunteers of all ages, including whole families, to pick up the trash littering every part of the town.
It’s been a club tradition for around 20 years, club president Marsha Hartley said. This year and last, Rochester Boy Scouts Troop 31 stationed its members at a tent outside of Women’s Club headquarters at 37 Marion Road to hand out trash bags and help direct volunteers to where they should go to pick up the trash, including assigning them specific streets.
Usually, however, people know where to go where the littering is bad, Hartley said. “Neighbors get together and cover their neighborhoods and let us know what streets they are covering,” she said.
Hartley said with a hint of surprise and exasperation in her voice, “Nip bottles are the biggest item, the one we collect the most, followed by takeout containers and bags and Styrofoam cups. Believe it or not, also diapers. And tires. When we find those, we pull them to the side of the road, and people specializing in tires take them away. People driving through our town think nothing of throwing things out of their car windows. No wonder we need this event.”
The event fills 40 to 50 large, contractor-sized bags a year, Hartley said. Last year, people stayed in their cars to pick up the bags they needed. This year, visitors were able to visit the club tent on foot.
Led by Jeffrey Eldridge, the Rochester Highway Department planned this week to pick up the bags that the volunteers laid on the side of the road, sparing volunteers from the task of completing the work in one day.
Scout troop leader Brianne Crook, directing the effort to hand out supplies, explained they give out 13-gallon Hefty bags and larger, contractor-sized bags and instruct people to fill the latter with the former and leave the larger bags out for Highway Department pickup.
Halfway through a fortunately sunny and mild Saturday, most of the box of large bags and 60 of the smaller bags had been handed out, and a troop volunteer had to run to the store for more. And that tally doesn’t even account for residents who use their own bags for the event, Crook said.
The tent outside the club was also handing out gloves and flower seeds for planting where trash has disturbed the natural landscape, along with hard hats donated by event sponsor Covanta, which also donates employees and their families for the pickups. Inside the club, volunteers could grab coffee and donuts donated by the scout troop.
Crook’s helper, Krystle Empey, said what she likes about the event is that “it gets the younger and older generations working together for the community. We’re cleaning up our town, together.”
“It’s a great community event to be part of,” Crook added. “And it’s always surprising and shocking how much trash can be found on the side of our roads.”
Chick Allen of Hathaway Pond Circle told Crook and Empey he will be collecting the trash as far as the Marion town line. “Thank you for doing this,” he told them. “It’s important to make the town a cleaner environment.”
Sarah Jacques and her daughter Abbey, age 11, of local Girl Scout Troop 6215, said they’ve done this the past two years because “we just like to keep our town looking beautiful.”
Beverly Pierce said as she hand-delivered her Hefty bag collection of trash from Walnut Plain Road to the large trash bag at the Women’s Club tent, “Rochester is so special. We do this because we like to keep it clean.”
By Michael J. DeCicco