Keep America Beautiful application readied

In June, a handful of volunteers scoured the area for litter to get a better gauge of how trashy streets, backyards and parking lots had become.

The results have been tabulated, and the volunteers found the answer somewhat surprising: It wasn't as bad as they thought.

"The area was a lot less littered than we expected it to be," Rhett Hendrickson, chairman of the Keep Southeast Missouri Beautiful technical committee, said. "I was pleasantly surprised we are not in a really bad way regarding litter."

The volunteers looked mainly along the major roadways in Cape Girardeau, Jackson, rural Cape Girardeau County and Scott City. Based on a scale of 1 to 4 -- with 4 being the most litter -- none of the areas scored higher than a 2.5.

Hendrickson noted one caveat -- that they did the survey in warmer months when litter may not be as noticeable and more people may be willing to help pick up trash, unlike in the cooler winter months.

"But overall, not bad," he said.

The committee is moving on to phase two, preparing the certification paperwork to file as a member of Keep America Beautiful, the national not-for-profit organization dedicated to eradicating litter from the U.S. landscape. Tim Arbeiter, vice president for community development for the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce, said he hopes to file the paperwork within the next few weeks.

"Being part of Keep America Beautiful would allow us to tap into a national network," Arbeiter said. "They have a lot of programs, and it would allow us to choose what we want to work on locally. We wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel."

And just because the area looked good overall, both Hendrickson and Arbeiter said there is room for improvement. For example, Hendrickson said the county appears to be much more lax on its dumping sites and allowing the burning of trash, which often sends litter scuffling into the sky and onto the ground.

"Trash flies away when it burns," Hendrickson said. "And the ordinances need to be reconciled. They need to be similar across the board."

There are places to drop off compost and yard waste in Jackson and Cape Girardeau, he said, but not in Scott City or Cape Girardeau County.

After Keep America Beautiful decides whether to accept Keep Southeast Missouri Beautiful as a chapter, Hendrickson said an advisory board will need to be convened to decide on a strategy from there.

But Hendrickson said one thing he'd like to see included is an educational component.

"The goal is to avoid the problem," he said. "You can keep cleaning up the litter as long as people keep throwing stuff out. But we need to teach people not to do it. That's where it starts."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137