On the morning of Saturday, April 23rd, Sto-Rox residents met at the McKees Rocks Borough building and the First Baptist Church to do neighborhood clean ups in their respective communities. The event took place from 9 a.m. to noon and with a turn out of nearly 100 residents and volunteers, the groups collected over 500 bags of garbage bags and a few truck loads of TVs, tires and other debris.
Volunteers collected over 500 bags of garbage during Saturday’s Cleanup.
The clean up was timely, as it came a day after Earth Day.
The first Earth Day was in 1970 and started at the request of the late Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin after he witnessed damage from a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara the previous year.
“These types of events are a great way to get community members involved in doing their part to help the environment,” said Erika Deyarmin, Public Affairs Coordinator for Waste Management in Western Pennsylvania said about neighborhood clean up events.
Encouraging residents to get in the habit of being mindful over litter, pollution and recycling is a big aim of clean ups.
“They encourage them [residents] to ‘think green’, not only for that day, but maybe in ways they can apply it to their everyday life,” she added. “Clean up events give community members an opportunity to pitch in to help improve their neighborhood, and usually provide a way for them to get rid of hard to dispose of items.”
Deyarmin also stressed the importance of recycling.
“We are encouraging consumers to recycle often and recycle right for their families and their communities. Trashing items that could otherwise be recycled prevents those materials from being made in to new products, and in turn, causes new products to be made from virgin material (or natural resources),” she said.
“Eventually, the natural resources we use to make these products will decline, and because they are natural resources, we just cannot re-make this material. While it may not have a large impact on you or your children, it could have a lasting effect on the generations to follow ours,” Deyarmin explained.
