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Litter Awareness Week continues in Clarke County "A lot of people don't think they can make a difference," said Rita Wilson of Clarke County Citizens Against Litter (CCCAL). Some people think the litter problem is too big for one person, she said. However, "People look at leaders, and if they don't see the leaders out there doing something, it does not give them a big desire to do anything. "…We are leaders of this county," Wilson said, "and we need to be out there making a difference." Wilson spoke to the Sept. 19 meeting of the Grove Hill Civitan Club. Litter Awareness Week continues through Saturday in Clarke County. She told a story about a lady named Willie in Coffeeville who had been known for picking up litter in the community. "We used to not have litter in Coffeeville," Wilson said. "…We didn't know why until it (appeared) everywhere - all of a sudden." Willie had died. While she was alive, "Willie was picking up everywhere she went….We had no litter in our town until Willie was gone. We all thought she was so strange and different…but I now realize and ask the question, who was the strange one? Was it Willie or you and I? "…Willie knew her direction in life," she said. "I'm afraid a lot of times we don't know our direction and what we need to do to make a difference. After people are dead and gone, we discover that they were making a difference and we never even noticed. "This is my passion," Wilson said of the anti-littering effort. "…We hope the next 12 months we are going to make a difference in this county." The CCCAL committee has been working the last five years on the litter effort. The committee has two major cleanup projects each year, PALS (People Against a Littered State) in the spring and a county effort in the fall. "Our goal for this is to educate people, get into the schools (and) educate the adults that do not know better," she said. "These children's parents - a lot of them are ones who are littering." Anti-littering information will be distributed in all the major communities of the county on Sept. 29. Inmates from the Clarke County Jail will be used to help clean up some of the worst areas in the county such as Old Highway 5 and Morning Star Road. There will be a dumpster located behind Grove Hill Town Hall as part of the litter campaign through Oct. 1. Hazardous chemicals, construction materials or tires are not welcome. In addition, "it's a proven factor that 50 percent of the litter comes off the back of a truck," Wilson said. "People throw anything on the back of their truck - expecting it to stay there.
"…The majority of people do not intend for (litter) to land on the side of the road. It's nice people who do it. They just don't think. There are people all the time that are killed from things coming off the back of a truck."
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