Clean the streets : Volunteer groups help Bentonville make mark in Great American Cleanup.
Posted on Sunday, May 4, 2008
BENTONVILLE - Just 20 minutes into his morning, Dustin Newman had already filled a quarter of his plastic garbage bag. He knew he'd be picking up trash, but until he actually got started, he never realized how much.
"Normally, I'm too busy to notice all the garbage that ends up on the sides of the roads," said Newman, a member of the team from Calvary Tabernacle that was volunteering in the Clean the Streets Day on Saturday. "Until you get out here and start seeing it up close, you just don't realize. It's everywhere. It's dirty. "
Newman and fellow volunteers from Calvary Tabernacle spent Saturday morning combing the shoulders and drainage ditches along the section of Central Avenue between Southeast J Street and Interstate 540. A few blocks back, Bentonville mayor Bob McCaslin and another group of volunteers were busy filling garbage bags of their own. Other groups spent the morning scattered throughout Bentonville, mainly in and around the downtown area, each armed with poking sticks, bags and rubber gloves.
Keep Benton County Beautiful once again partnered with Bentonville to carry out Clean the Streets Day, the local version of the annual Great American Cleanup. Volunteer groups - like the ones that combed Bentonville's streets - were picking up trash in several communities across Arkansas and the United States. In Bentonville, those volunteers ranged from church groups and city employees to a team from Crafton, Tull and Sparks Engineering and several from Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
No matter what route a group was assigned to, they were all surprised by the amount of trash that was actually out there.
Wal-Mart employees Marlene Curtis and Beverly Miles walked the west side of Southwest A Street in the area of the Bentonville Community Development building, while several of their co-workers were spread out from Central Avenue to Arkansas Highway 102. Every couple of steps, Curtis and Miles found themselves reaching down to pick up another piece of trash.
"Events like this are important because there's a lot of trash out there and anyone who volunteers really gets a sense of how much," said Bob Mudie, president of Keep Benton County Beautiful. "We all need to do our part."
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