County-wide clean up a success; future anti-litter efforts planned
Volunteers pick up rubbish near the intersection of Hatcher Road and Airport Road on Saturday.
Neel Madhavan | daily newspaper
“You drive down the street and see rubbish strewn across the street – it’s just not good, especially in our county. We have a small county and we should take pride in the fact that it looks good. “- Harold Tedder, volunteer and owner of Tedder Trash Solutions
ROCKINGHAM – Richmond County is cleaner today than it has been in a long time thanks to a nationwide effort to pick up rubbish and trash that has littered the roadsides across the county.
After the first appointment was postponed due to bad weather, 39 groups of 487 volunteers collected 404 bags of 6,449 pounds of trash as part of the Earth Day community cleanup on Saturday.
“I would consider our efforts to have an impact on the Richmond County’s waste problem,” said Bryan K. Leggett, assistant director of public works for Richmond County. “I think this has definitely created awareness in our community and it’s great to see the community’s participation and excitement. Overall, I think Earth Day was a success. “
The event was a nationwide partnership – organized by Richmond County Aging Services – between local governments that have been involved in litigation for over a year, between private companies, and between groups of parishioners to clean up the county and change the litter culture.
Harold Tedder was part of a group of Faith Missionary Baptist Church volunteers collecting rubbish along Battley Dairy Road and Airport Road. He said he and his wife got wind of the cleanup by the Leggett community and the county public works director Jerry Austin.
“It would be nice to drive down the street and not see rubbish everywhere,” said Tedder. “Well, it is urgently needed. You drive down the street and see rubbish strewn on the street – it’s just not good, especially in our county. We have a small county and we should take pride in the fact that it looks good. “
Tedder’s family owns a company, Tedder Trash Solutions, which picks up household trash in the county, and he said he offered his company’s clean-up trucks to help pick up bags and transport them to the dump.
“It’s something we wanted to be a part of,” said Tedder. “We decided that we want to help and (people) can use our garbage trucks if they want. We could use our trucks and trailers and pick up the trash – we would do anything to help. We wanted to help spread the word to include other churches and other organizations. “
Pat Swails, who was with a group from Richmond Community College to pick up trash on Hatcher Road and Airport Road, said the fact that they had to schedule a day for nationwide garbage collection shows how dire the problem is .
“If you throw it out the window, someone has to pick it up,” said Swails. “If people didn’t throw away, we wouldn’t have to put this day aside. But this way you can get very close to nature and just be outside. “
Other groups and their respective assigned streets included:
• American Woodmark on Freeman Mill Road
• Hamlet Depot and Museum on Highway 38 and Hamlet City Lake
• Sweet Haven Church on Midway Road
• RSHS Beta Club on Mizpah Road
• Superior cranes on Highway 74
The Hoffman volunteers decided to clean up their community on the original April 24th despite the rain. A group of 19 volunteers picked up all of the papers, cans and bottles along the 1 mile stretch of US 1 that runs through town. This group has committed to doing this cleanup on a quarterly basis for the next two years, inspired by the county’s efforts.
“We saw it as a way to beautify the neighborhood and make it more attractive to live here,” Andrew Gibson previously told the Daily Journal.
Other groups, including one from REMAX Southern Realty, also picked up trash earlier this week. REMAX volunteers cleaned up Spring Street in Hamlet and Airport Road in Rockingham on April 29th.
“This has allowed some groups to have full week pickups and not be tied to a specific day, which helped all groups to attend,” Leggett said.
Tedder and Swails both felt that the cleanup should be done on a more regular basis and not once or once a year.
“We have to do it more often,” said Tedder. “I think they talk about it more often. Instead of once a year we should talk about doing it maybe quarterly or just more than once a year to keep our streets clean. “
According to Leggett, some organizations and groups of volunteers have already made commitments to continue their efforts on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
“I think it should be more than just one day a year,” said Swails. “I think we have to plan days to pick up rubbish because some roads are worse than others, like 74, of course, much more traveled than other places.”
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Contact Neel Madhavan at 910-817-2675 ext. 2751 or [email protected] Follow on Twitter at @NeelMadhavan.