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If you're new to town, or you've been buried in a snowdrift, Stash the Trash is a communitywide litter cleanup pushed by The Tribune, the Ames Morning Rotary, Rotaract, Chitty Garbage Service, Reiman Gardens and now the Veishea Community Service Day organizers. Each year we mobilize as many service clubs, scout groups, churches, neighborhood organizations, friends, neighbors and individuals to get out and pick up litter.
The hope is that by building a critical mass of interest, the effort at litter cleanup will extend to litter prevention. As awareness is created, so is action.
In past years, we've brought out several hundred people who have pulled a couple tons of trash from the parks, hedges, ditches, boulevards and alleys of Ames.
Trash bags and rubber gloves are provided by Keep Iowa Beautiful for those who need them. Supplies will be available beginning at 7 a.m. on that day at the drop-off point, the parking lot of Reiman Gardens.
After cleanup, volunteers can bring trash collected from public areas to the drop-off, where Chitty Garbage Service will provide a couple of huge containers for disposal. Please, no household waste. This is NOT the city's free disposal day.
Participants also will be treated to a free lunch served by the Iowa State University Rotaract club.
This day also will be Veishea Community Service Day. Campus organizers are putting together many other community service projects for that day, pulling volunteers from student groups out into the community, as well. It is a celebration of volunteerism.
Volunteering is simple. If you or an organization to which you belong already has in mind a stretch of street, or a park, or an odd corner you'd like to clean up, visit the Web site listed and click through to put your name on the list. Signing up helps us keep track of who's out there, and where they will be, to avoid duplication.
If you want to help, but don't really know where to go, visit the Web site again. In a couple of days, the sign-up page will contain a list of streets and parks that blanket the city. You can see what's already covered and where you might like to help.
The sign-up link is live right now. But the list of locations is still under construction. We'll e-mail anyone who signs up now to check on locations. But keep checking, we're only a short ways away.
You can also volunteer for Veishea Community Service Day projects at the same site.
To help, go to www.veishea.iastate.edu. Click on "Get Involved" in the red drop-down menu. Then click on "Community" in the black top navigation bar. At the bottom of that page, click on "Sign up online." That will get you to a dialogue box that will ask for your name, phone number and e-mail address. There's a link that says "Select the project you would like to participate in." That's the link that's still under development. But again, keep checking.
Even easier, The Tribune's Web site, www.amestrib.com, will post a direct link to the signup sheet. Watch for the Stash the Trash button on our Web site by Thursday.
And if you're good at typing urls, you can go directly to http://www.veishea.iastate.edu/apply.php?app=service_day to reach the sign-up page.
Take heart in the fact that spring is only weeks away. And help celebrate the season with Stash the Trash.
