Volunteers gathered in Verona on Thursday to clean up trash and recyclables from the Middle River. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
[sound of cans rattling in trash bag]
About 30 people spent Thursday afternoon scouring the stream along Mill Race Road in Verona. Some of them, like David Wallace, of Staunton, were volunteers with the organization Friends of the Middle River.
[sounds of river flowing, traffic]
DAVID WALLACE: I do a lot of fishing, see a lot of trash in the streams and things like that. … There was definitely a cache-load of cans on that side! … A lot of cigarette butts, a lot of cans, a lot of paper trash. A lot of people just throwing their trash out the window.
The event was organized by the national nonprofit Can'd Aid [canned aid] and sponsored by one of their partners – the Ball Corporation – which has an aluminum manufacturing facility in Verona. Ball employees were among the cleanup crew.
Lauren Greenfield, who works for Can'd Aid, said they collected about 15 bags of trash and eight bags of aluminum cans from this spot on the Middle River.
LAUREN GREENFIELD: All of these aluminum products will be taken to recycling and turned around and it's the most efficient form of recycling you can get. Most of these will turn into a product within 60 days or so and be back on the shelf!
The benefits of a clean stream stretch beyond those banks – the Middle River eventually flows into the Shenandoah River and out to the Chesapeake Bay.
