Highway Intersections and Parking Lots

(It took me a good month before I decided I needed to start a litter blog.  The first four posts are delayed recaps.)

I schedule my litter days mainly for the weekends or Sunday-Monday.  I worked the next weekend along Bridge Street, where I live, and downtown along 6^th Street.  I move a lot faster on Bridge Street, where there is naturally less litter than downtown.  (That was the weekend that I went to breakfast and worked around the restaurant; these recaps of the first month are not fully chronological.)  But I could still fill my bucket within a few blocks.

Last Saturday, I worked mainly on Greenwood, the Volunteer Park, and downtown a little.  Sunday, I was driving back from Schroeder weeding class, when was stopped in the line at the Redwood Avenue / Redwood Highway intersection, looking at the triangle between the three streets, full of butts and other trash, so I turned onto it and started cleaning it up, using a broom and dustpan on the butt-mulch along the edge, and then proceeding to the litter-grabber for the more widely scattered stuff.  Got some mashed cardboard boxes off the road as well. 

It was a great place to clean up, with people stopping at the light and watching me; some waved and I gave them leaflets telling about the service.  I spent a good hour and half there, and then had to go find places for 5 bags of litter and dirt. 

So I proceeded downtown, looking for public trash cans.  The one at the Courier lot was the first one I saw, and I dropped one there and picked up the front of their lot.  I dropped another at the first public parking lot on 7^th and picked it up.  Another couple went to the public parking lot at 7^th and G, where I picked up a bit in the front where it was really dirty.  The last went to the can behind the Visitors Center on G near 6^th.

Monday, I decided to work on litter Sunday-Mondays until the March, and do the Monday customer on Saturday after the Greenwood dog park weeding class.  I was still in a litter-cleaning mood and had a target picked out; the intersection on 7^th as one comes to the bridge, where drivers wait for the light and throw their butts.  The street sweeper gets the bulk of them where the curb makes it easy, and most butts up near the light were on the other side of the sidewalk with other litter.  But as one walks further up 7th street, the sidewalk becomes a path up the hill and the smokers aim their butts at the series of reflectors standing along the edge of the roadway.  Each had a huge accumulation around it, and they had to be picked up one by one.  Still, by the end of the afternoon, I had cleaned from the light up through the reflectors, as well as the lot at the closed drive-in restaurant where I parked, and partway onto the bridge.

Again, I had a batch of litter bags to drop in public trash cans, and parking lots to pick up while doing so.  I picked up some more from the Courier lot and finished picking up the lot at 7^th and G, among other spots, before the sun set.

It took about 6 weeks, but I have settled on where to clean first: Where it is dirtiest and has the most traffic.  For now, that is Redwood Avenue and the South Y.