- Litter cleanup costs taxpayers over $250,000 each year for county-maintained roads.
- Volunteer efforts are essential—community cleanups and education are key to tackling the issue.
- Watch the video to see some simple actions you can start taking to help out.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Thomas County spends over a quarter million dollars a year cleaning up litter.
I'm digging into why litter is such a big issue and what neighbors can do to help.
Litter is a serious problem here in Thomas County, and it's not just about trash on the side of the road.
It's affecting our community in ways most people don't realize.
Every week, over 200 bags of litter are picked up from our roads—roads that we all share.
From the highways to local streets, trash is everywhere.
"When people see a heavily littered area, they may be more inclined to litter themselves. They see it on the ground already and think that maybe it's okay to litter here. Where the cause and effect of that is in neighborhoods where there is a lot of litter, you may be devaluing or driving down the price of homes because who wants to live in a littered neighborhood?," said Murphy.
Julia Murphy, executive director of Keep Thomas County Beautiful, tells me she and her volunteers are leading the charge, organizing events and spreading awareness to tackle litter every day.
"I think when people are involved or hear about a community cleanup, it's sending out an anti-litter message," said Murphy.
And it's working. Over 185 volunteers showed up just this March for the Greatest American Cleanup event, picking up a whopping 120 bags of litter across 13 sites in the county.
But the litter keeps piling up.
"There's numbers you get really staggered when you start looking at them as far as dollars that are spent on litter control for just our county," said Knight.
Jay Knight, director of Public Works, tells me Thomas County spends more than a quarter of a million dollars each year on litter cleanup.
And that's just for county-maintained roads.
The state spends an additional $75,000 a year cleaning up litter and preventing further harm.
"It can be different things from litter in the roadways can cause vehicle accidents. It's harmful to wildlife. It's also bad, I'm sure everybody by now has seen pictures of birds or different things with the six-pack ring around its neck or animals getting a plastic bag stuck around their head," said Murphy.
It all starts with simple actions like securing your load when hauling trash, using compactors at collection sites, recycling materials like metal and cardboard, or just paying attention to where you throw your trash can help cut down on litter.
You can organize a cleanup day yourself by borrowing cleanup gloves and supplies from KTCB.
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