Community & Clean Streets

The Greatest American Cleanup is running through July 4th

By Rafaella Delia

Think closely for a second: in the past 24 hours, have you seen a piece of litter somewhere on the streets of Rockland? An empty beer can, a stray plastic bag, or a cigarette butt? 

If the answer is “no”, look a little closer the next time you go outside. You’ll most likely find litter somewhere between the sidewalks, roadways, and storm drains. Nobody is more up-close and personal with this issue than Jim Dean, Orangetown’s Highway Superintendent. 

In Orangetown alone, Dean and his team have identified 42 locations as “hot-spots” where waste tends to accumulate. 

It takes about six weeks for them to sweep through these areas, but by the time they’ve covered the full cycle, their original location is peppered with cans and cigarette butts all over again. Back to square one.

Luckily for Dean, a small army of volunteers is helping to lighten his load for the season. 

The annual Great American Cleanup, a county-wide initiative to clean the streets of Rockland, is underway until July 4th. The initiative is spearheaded by Keep Rockland Beautiful (KRB), a local non-profit that’s organized group cleanups from Sparkill to Stony Point. They are an affiliate of the national organization Keep America Beautiful (KAB). 

With the U.S. approaching its 250th birthday, KRB aspires to make this the “Greatest” American Cleanup yet. Marisa Marrone, Executive Director of the non-profit, spoke with the RCT on KRB’s  vision.

“I think there’s many facets to this, it’s not just cleaning up litter,” Marrone pointed out. “We need to preserve our land, and I think people just unfortunately have the mentality these days that it’s not theirs, it’s not their problem.”

A littered landscape is obviously unattractive, but it goes beyond just surface-level. Litter presents serious health implications when plastic pollution makes its way into Rockland’s waterways; according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), many chemicals involved in the production of plastic are known carcinogens. Among many other issues, carcinogens are most notably linked to higher cancer rates.

A polluted landscape also suggests a collective lack of awareness for our communal surroundings. In an age where we’re receiving rapid-fire information digitally, is that really surprising?

“You see social media and all the different posts and we do need to acknowledge things, right?” Marrone noted. “I think people are just more distracted by bigger headlines that we just can’t do anything about, unfortunately.”

When you look at the wider political scope of the U.S. right now, it’s hard not to get flustered. However,while we focus on what it takes to shift the big picture, we tend to forget what’s happening in our own backyards. “Things do need to be brought to attention, but there’s also action. Action can take place instead of pointing fingers.”

And at 10am on a Saturday, just outside of the Orangeburg Library, a group of Rockland County residents chose action. Joette Yore, one of the library’s young adult librarians, said “We like to offer a lot of community service opportunities for the teens to partake in.”

One of these teens was 10th grader Camila Guiterrez, who aspires towards a career in the field of environmental sciences. When asked why she decided to spend her Saturday morning in a bright yellow vest picking up trash on the side of route 303, she shrugged and said “It’s a small step towards the right thing.”

With the big 250 on the horizon, Rockland residents are welcomed to take their own small step by participating in a cleanup to keep Rockland beautiful for another 250.