By Eric Ruble Photojournalist: Rachel McPherron - 6:02 PM April 29, 2017
(KTVA) ANCHORAGE –
As temperatures in Southcentral warm, Anchorage’s snowpack is quickly dwindling. The melting snow leaves behind garbage – lots of it. For the forty-ninth year, Anchorage Citywide Cleanup Week aims to beautify the city before summer. The cleanup kicked off Saturday, with a particularly large group of volunteers picking up trash in Mountain View.
“We haven’t done a community volunteer day where residents have gone out and cleaned the residential streets in quite a few years,” said Radhika Krishna, the treasurer for Mountain View City Council.
She said investing time in cleaning up now will pay off when summer arrives.
“It just makes everyone have so much more pride in their neighborhood,” said Krishna.
Krishna and other volunteers cleaned litter from public areas like sidewalks, parks and medians. Anything too large to safely throw away– like sofas and mattresses– were marked for the municipality to haul away later. Krishna said they would collect trash from main roadways and alleys alike.
“I don’t even know what we’ll find in the alleys, but there will be a lot of little trash,” she said.
Many people made the cleanup a family event.
“There’s just so much trash going around in these types of neighborhoods and they don’t have the right resources to clean it up, so I think it’s good for us to come out here and give back to the community,” said 12-year-old Zach Huntman, who was volunteering alongside his father and brother.
Orange trash bags can be collected at any Fred Meyer location in the Anchorage municipality, including Eagle River. Landfills will accept them free of charge. Additionally, on Saturday, May 6, the Anchorage Regional Landfill will accept residential garbage for free. If you would like to learn more about the Citywide Cleanup or register a team to collect garbage, click here.