It all started with Ash­leigh walk­ing her dog.  She was fed up with see­ing trash every­where she looked and decided to do some­thing about it.  A few emails and phone calls later, a com­mu­nity cleanup was on the agenda of the next neigh­bor­hood meet­ing in Cedar Villa Heights, a diverse com­mu­nity in Jes­sup.  A lot of plan­ning and dis­cus­sion later, about 20 vol­un­teers joined together on May 22nd to clean up their com­mu­nity.  Vol­un­teers cleaned up trash around a park, stormwa­ter drainage pond, wooded areas, and along the sides of streets.  The vol­un­teers pulled trash, metal, wood and 8 tires out of one of the wooded areas.  They recy­cled every­thing they could.  While they worked, they won­dered, who did this? Who would throw their junk into the woods?

It is hard to under­stand why peo­ple are still lit­ter­ing.  What can we do about it?  Well some peo­ple are just going to lit­ter.  But they are less likely to lit­ter on clean areas.  Hav­ing mem­bers of the com­mu­nity out there and vis­i­ble shows that some­one cares and is pay­ing atten­tion.  Maybe the per­son throw­ing tires in the woods will think twice after see­ing their neigh­bors work so hard.  Some peo­ple think that the land­fill is too far away or that it is expen­sive.  The land­fill on Mar­riottsville Road is free with a Howard County driver’s license for house­hold trash, recy­clables and up to 4 tires.  A few years ago you had to buy a yearly pass, but that is not how it is any­more.  You have to pay for con­struc­tion waste, but it is a very rea­son­able $60 per ton.    One recent trip to get rid of old tile coun­ter­tops cost $12.  Too many con­trac­tors were tak­ing advan­tage of the pre­vi­ous sys­tem, and so the rules were changed.

Dur­ing the cleanup, Cedar Villa also used dump­sters pro­vided by Howard County to have an easy way for peo­ple to dis­pose of bulky items.  They even set up a pilot project to recy­cle metal items instead of putting them in the dump­sters.  Signs were posted on the dump­sters ask­ing peo­ple to put metal items to the side.  Two Cedar Villa neigh­bors then took the recy­clable metal to scrap metal dealers.

The com­mu­nity really worked together and fin­ished the cleanup in about 2 hours.  The results were trash free areas, lots of clut­ter removed from homes and yards, and a few new friend­ships.  Extra thank you’s go out to orga­niz­ers Terry Key­fau­ver, Ash­leigh Mat­tia, Henry Mouzon, and Patti Neumyer.  Clean up day vol­un­teers Bill Adams, Russ Ching, Susan Neumyer, Mar­ion and Tracy Rochelle and their fam­i­lies did a great job too.  National Honor Soci­ety stu­dent Megan Mag­in­nis and her mom Susan also par­tic­i­pated in the cleanup.  A busi­ness in the com­mu­nity, Frank’s Diner, gen­er­ously pro­vided lunch for the volunteers.

By join­ing together they really made a dif­fer­ence.  Ash­leigh still finds some trash as she walks her dog, but it is a lot less and now she brings a small trash bag with her while she is out.  If you would like to have dump­sters for bulk trash in your com­mu­nity please call the Bureau of Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices at 410–313-6444.  If you would like help start­ing a com­mu­nity cleanup near your home, please email Elissa Rei­neck at ereineck@howardcountymd.com or call her at 410−313−1175.