About 1,000 volunteers took to the highways around Vail, CO last week for their annual clean up to remove trash from the medians, ditches, and sides of the roads. In total, they removed thousands of bags of trash, debris, and waste weighing more than twenty two tons.
This is almost double the five year average of twelve tons, although last year’s cleanup was canceled due to the pandemic.
“I’ve said, for years, that the average amount of trash that gets put down on our highways in an average year is about 10 to 12 tons. So the fact that we didn’t do it last year, and there’s about 22 tons, tells me that’s about right.”
– Holly Loff with the Eagle Valley Watershed Council told Vail Daily
Although the average for the last few years is around twelve tons, for the period 2004-2012 the average weight of trash cleared up was closer to twenty five tons. Much of that was older trash, accumulated across many years before the cleanups began.
