Phillips Avenue Trash Cleanup Experience

I adopted Phillips Avenue late last week and spent a couple hours on both Saturday and Sunday picking up trash. When I’m out doing this stuff I always make an effort to talk to pretty much anyone I come in contact with, especially the kids.

While I was out on Saturday there was a stretch that had a large amount of trash. As I was cleaning up this particular area three kids (probably 12 – 14) were approaching me and the youngest picked up on the fact that I was picking up trash. He looked at me, looked down at a potato chip bag that someone has tossed on the ground, picked it up and put it in my orange trash bag. While it may have only been one item, I was thrilled at the fact that he made an effort to help in some way.

I also talked to lots of other folks and one gentleman named Oscar offered up an interesting perspective on the White Street Landfill that is in close proximity to his home. I posed the following question about the landfill, “Oscar, if I told you that by reopening the White Street Landfill to municipal waste we could save, let’s say $7 million a year, allowing your property tax to potentially go down – would you be in favor?” Without hesitation he said, “Man, I’d rather pay the tax. We have enough crap (he used a diff word) here already. I’ve got low income housing at the bottom of the hill, crack deals going down at the store right across the street, crime and prostitution. I think that is plenty enough negative for one neighborhood.” I couldn’t agree more.

Phillips Avenue is about 1.7 miles long. Guess how many trash cans there are along the sidewalk for folks to dispose of trash? Zero. How can we expect folks to throw their trash away if there is no where to do so? I’ll be working with the Field Operations Department later today to get some cans put out.

I spent a good amount of time at the corner in the picture above. There is a baseball field on the right side of the road and it appears that folks tend to walk back across the street when leaving the park. There were a ton of icy wrappers on the ground, as well as juice cups, and I imagine these are post game snacks for the kids. By simply putting out a trash can on the corner we can greatly reduce the litter on this corner, which will be a small step towards cleaning up Phillips Avenue.

This photo shows off a community event that was taking place across the street from the previously mentioned baseball field. Thankfully the sun was shining and the temperature seemed to be just right. The shopping center you see in the distance is where the new library is slated to be built.