Volunteers brave cold to clean roads, trails

BELLA VISTA — The cluttered roads of the city bother William Jackson.

He considers all streets and byways his backyard.

No one would come to his backyard and dump a bunch of garbage, so why would people litter beautiful Bella Vista?

“This is my backyard,” he said, standing along a busy Bella Vista Way near the Missouri/Arkansa line on Jan. 9. “I pick up whenever I can.”

He and his friend, Sandra Armstrong, keep pickers and bags in their car trunk. They pick up trash in neighborhoods, along the roads and trails, Armstrong said.

When they found that Bella Vista had an organized group, they jumped in, ready to help. “We found this group and they have a plan and horsepower,” Jackson said.

The two were among a dozen dedicated volunteers who helped clean up a stretch of highway Saturday morning as part of Pick The Town Green. Armed with pickers and trash bags and donning reflective vests, the volunteers braved cold temperatures to pick up other people’s trash.

Plastic bags, foam cups, pieces of PVC pipe, tin cans and bottles are among the items the two found. In just over an hour, the two had already filled three huge garbage bags full of trash.

For Marci Downing, the trash cleanup effort is critical to maintaining Bella Vista’s uniqueness.

Downing and her husband moved to Bella Vista from Colorado in 2018. She compares the two locations and believes Bella Vista offers amazing beauty.

“It’s an incredibly gorgeous place,” she said. “It doesn’t compare to Colorado.”

The organized effort — Pick The Town Green — takes place on a monthly basis. Volunteers chose the second Saturday of every month and meet from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Different parts of the city are on the agenda for pickup.

Downing believes it’s important to have an organized group of dedicated volunteers who rotate cleaning up various areas of the city. She sees a variety of trash, depending on the area of the city.

In the Highlands, she sees a lot of construction garbage. In other locations, she sees trash likely flung out of a car. Near the state line, there are a lot of alcohol bottles — from single-serve and beer cans, to a half-gallon bottle of vodka, she said.

Volunteers are scheduling the next event in February and will focus on Dartmoor and Spanker, Pschierer said.

A related project — Six in Sixty — will take place March 20, he added. For information, visit Pick The Town Green online.

(Special to NWA Democrat-Gazette/Sally Carroll) Marci Downing picks up trash along Bella Vista Way as part of the Pick The Town Green effort. Downing said the effort is a personal issue for her. She dislikes seeing trash around the village, she said.