Fall Cleanup underway across county

If you've let a fast food wrapper fly out your car's window while driving through downtown lately, perhaps one with a chunk of your meal left inside to putrefy in the sun for a week or so, then no worries; one of more than two dozen young volunteers picked it up for you Saturday morning as part of the Keep Faulkner County Beautiful Fall Cleanup.

"When people throw stuff out their window they don't think that people have to come behind them and pick it up," Conway High School Beta Club student Christie Ernsbarger said while trying to simultaneously eat lunch and talk about the particularly vile bits of trash she picked up earlier in the day.

"I don't think they're thinking at all," fellow Beta student Bryce Wroten added.

In total, 57 bags of trash were collected from downtown, along Harkrider Street, the Robinson Cemetery, the Acklin Gap area and at the grounds of the Faulkner County Courthouse, where two volunteers planned to return after lunch to rake and bag pine straw.

As was the case last year, most volunteers were shocked mostly by the number of cigarette butts littering the city's streets and public spaces.

.story-ad {

width: 310px;

float: left;

margin: 0 10px 10px 0;

padding: 4px;

}

- Advertisement -

OAS_AD('x22');

"I had no idea so many people smoked," a volunteer said.

Fast food packaging ranging from the paper drinking straw wrappers that one volunteer said deteriorate into "little bitty bits of paper that you're picking out of the pavement forever" to pizza boxes were a close but uncelebrated second in terms of quantity, volunteers reported.

Also, if anyone left their battered but serviceable lime green skateboard with yellow wings painted on the top, pink trucks on the bottom and lots of character lying around downtown, you might find it at the Salvation Army Family Thrift Store.

Volunteers included the CHS Beta Club, University of Central Arkansas sociology classes, Army Recruitment Office staff and the three individuals who picked up along Harkrider Street.

The Fall Cleanup continues through November. Cleanup organizer Judy Corcoran said volunteers may contact her at 329-8584 to get cleanup supplies including gloves and trash bags. Also, she said, those who have gathered and bagged trash from an area may leave the bags in a sensible location and contact her to arrange their collection.

(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)