Community pitches in to tackle trash littered throughout the County

Paul Widger, Adam Bondy and Jason Young hurl bags of trash into the dumpster at the Public Works yard on Sandy Hook Road.

More than 225 participants pitched in to clean up trash along Prince Edward County roadsides, ditches, green spaces and shorelines on Saturday.

Tanya Delaney, the County’s Outdoor Facilities Supervisor, says approximately 250 big bags of garbage were collected along with recycling to fill about seven full-sized big blue bin carts found at the landfills and transfer stations.

Collection sites were held at Ameliasburgh, Sandy Hook Road Public Works Yard and at the Milford Town Hall.

She gives a special shout-out to almost two dozen cadets from Prince Edward 851 Squadron who gathered up at least 40 bags of garbage clearing up between Airport Road and their meet headquarters at Birdhouse City.

Cadets Laura, Tristen, Heidi and Izzy from 851 Squadron cleaning up along Airport Road.

Early in the morning, a cadet group of Lara, Tristen, Heidi and Izzy were found with bags in gloved hands picking from the roadside and ditch along Airport Road.

Trash in the bushes, off Airport Road.

Laura reported a number of cars beeped, or stopped to thank the group for its work. As Izzy held up a full, but dented and rusting can of apple pie filling, she said she hoped none of them was responsible for the littering in the first place.

Other than the pie filling, they reported picking up a lot of cigarette packages, fast food and drink containers and a lot of recyclable items.

A smaller group from the HJ MacFarland Home collected eight bags and directed the County to a few more bags, and items to retrieve by end of day Saturday along Hwy 49.

Community members dropping off the first round of trash collected in various locations of the County.

At the Public Works depot on Sandy Hook Road, Peggy Leavitt and her friend Sarah Chapman were making their first drop-off.

“This is our first trunk load and we’re not done yet,” said Leavitt, noting most of their clean-up to that point also involved fast food cups and typical garbage, “unless you count the mouse we found.”

Dave and Joan Crawford, cleaned up on Wesley Acres Road near where they live.

“It was mostly cans and fast food cups and containers,” Dave said, “We got about five bags full and most of it was recycling.”

Delaney said there were also a number of County staff and councillors who went out collecting on their day off, and email reports were still coming Monday morning from smaller groups such as ‘Bee’s Knees BnB & Art Studio’, and residents from numerous other areas.