Blog: City Blog

Saturday Extra Duty: City Crews Pick Up 542 Bags of Litter Across Knoxville

On a single Saturday (Feb. 20), 54 Public Service Department employees worked a sixth day and fanned out across the city to bag roadside debris.

The totals were impressive: They filled 542 bags of trash.

Another 3,900 pounds of light litter was sucked up by a vacuum truck.

And for good measure, the crews amassed three truck loads of discarded tires.

Crews collected litter at Broadway and Jacksboro Pike

Crews collected litter at Broadway and Jacksboro Pike

"Roadside litter is pretty bad right now, but our employees blitzed the worst areas, and they made a serious dent in the problem," Public Service Director Chad Weth said.

One of the problems is that trash pickup is not a part of any City worker's primary job description. If Public Service crews peel off on litter duty, that means other high-priority jobs - leaf pickup in the winter, for example, or mowing rights-of-way or maintaining parks in the summer - get neglected.

So a short-term solution is to create more work hours by asking employees to give up their Saturdays and help clean up the public rights-of-way.

The good news is that many others take pride in the appearance of their neighborhoods. Dozens of volunteers, community leaders and Keep Knoxville Beautiful organized their own cleanups last Saturday.

KKB partnered with BattleField Farm & Gardens to pick up litter on Boyds Bridge Pike and hosted a Saturday Spruce Up in Mechanicsville.

Also on Saturday, Andi Larson hosted her own cleanup near Concord Park, picking up almost a ton of scattered litter on Northshore Drive and in the park.

Click HERE to see some photos.

"That's what it takes - lots of people stepping up and lending a hand," Weth said. "We're happy to help, and we're appreciative that Keep Knoxville Beautiful and others mobilized so many volunteers last weekend."

WVLT Channel 8, WBIR Channel 10 and WATE Channel 6 all reported on the City anti-litter initiative. Watch WVLT's story HERE.

Meanwhile, here are some additional photos from Saturday's cleanup by the 54 hard-working City Public Service Department employees.

#KnoxvilleJobWellDone

Litter pickup on East Magnolia

Trash collected at Ed Shouse Drive and Middlebrook Pike

In addition to heaps of paper waste, fast-food packaging and cigarette butts, City crews collected truckloads of discarded tires

Tough footing as crews collect litter off West Robinson Road

Posted by evreeland On 25 February, 2021 at 8:58 AM