Late-May Green Up Day still hauls in nearly a ton of litter

June 5  |  By Lisa Scagliotti

Although Green Up Day came nearly a month later than usual this year, more than 200 volunteers in Waterbury stepped up last weekend to fan out along most town roads to pick up nearly a ton of trash and junk from roadsides, ditches, streambeds and more.

This year marked the 50th anniversary of the statewide cleanup event which got postponed to the last Saturday in May instead of the first due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak and the state’s stay-home order to prevent its spread. 

The fact that people have been staying close to home since mid-March may have contributed to what many volunteers on Green Up Day said was less trash than usual along their familiar cleanup routes. 

Many arrived at the drop-off at the town highway garage on Guptil Road saying they only filled one bag or even less. Volunteers admitted that they and neighbors have been out walking and picking up along the way before Green Up Day.

Based on interviews with volunteers dropping off their bags and collected items, an estimated 230 people took part in Green Up this year, filling at least 200 bright green bags. 

Casella reported that the container tipped the scales at the transfer station weighing in at .89 tons, slightly more than half the typical Green Up load for Waterbury in recent years. 

Due to the virus that has people working and going to school from home, Waterbury this year didn’t have many groups go out from workplaces, scout troops or classes from Thatcher Brook Primary School.  

But some still coordinated their efforts. A crew from Suncommon headed out in their company vehicles on Saturday to clean up along U.S. Route 2. The McKibben family on Gregg Hill did some heavy lifting, dragging some large items up from steep banks. 

Left to right: Tessa and Sadie McKibben and their dad, Dan McKibben, deliver a heavy haul to the Green Up collection. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti.

Green Up solves a mystery

Every Green Up Day reliably has some tale of discovery. 

This year’s began a few days before Green Up with a May 27 Front Porch Forum post by David Rye offering a “Waterbury Strongman/Strongwoman Prize” with a call for help extracting a heavy metal chair or table stuck, upside-down in Thatcher Brook.

“It's barely visible with just the four feet sticking slightly out of the water, but removing it has become an obsession of mine and I've failed so far. Now I'd like to sponsor a strongperson contest for whomever can free it from the brook,” he wrote, sweetening the request with a promise of creemees for four at Crossroads or a $10 gift card to any local business. “Time for somebody to show off their CrossFit gains!”

Later that day, he posted again. The contest was closed: “Less than 24 hours later, I received a photo of the proud excavators with the upright table on dry land.”

A bistro table lodged in Thatcher Brook became a Green Up quest. Photo by Dani Kehlmann.

Rye’s plea caught the attention of CrossFit coach Dani Kehlmann who had also noticed the metal legs sticking up from the stream. She enlisted one of the gym owners, Colin Pomer, and they headed to the brook with two dogs along.  

Later, she told how there were plenty of laughs as they dug with their hands, jumped up and down on part of the table, leveraged their body weight with the help of a downed branch, and finally got the table to budge. “Now the river looks just as it did before it had an unwanted bistro table buried in it,” Kehlmann said.

So, whose table was it? 

The spot was a few hundred yards downstream from Hen of the Wood. A check with owner Eric Warnstedt put the final piece in the puzzle. “We wrote that off awhile ago,” he said, explaining that high water sometimes washes things away from the restaurant’s outside seating area. “In 14 years the brook has come over the patio only several times but happened twice last year!” Warnstedt said. 

Given its time lodged in the rocky streambed, the table was ready for metal recycling. Rye’s spouse Caitlin Hollister delivered it to the Green Up collection last Saturday. 

Many helpers behind Green Up 

Many people behind the scenes help make Green Up happen every year: Town Manager Bill Shepeluk who gives the green light and handles the bill; Town Clerk Carla Lawrence and the folks at Sunflower Market juggle bags and more; Darrick Pitstick at Pack and Send updates the banner; Celia Clark and the Highway Department crew host the container with Casella timing delivery just right; Rodney Companion collects bags and tires and more; John Malter of the Mad River Resource Management Alliance makes the tires disappear. 

The nonprofit Green Up Vermont organization starts planning in January. People are often surprised to learn it’s not a state agency. Donations to it are tax-deductible.  

This year scores of volunteers not only bagged up returnable bottles and cans they found, they also dropped of theirs from home. At the end of the day, the folks from Green Mountain Performing Arts hauled away two pickup-truck loads to redeem as a fundraiser. 

Because of Covid concerns, there were no student volunteers at the drop-off this year. Veteran adult helpers wearing masks handled the traffic at a safe distance -- former Green Up coordinator Kit Walker and Rob Hoffman, Bill Minter, Pete Kulis. Chuck Kletecka, Robert Dostis and Steve Lotspeich take their jobs as scouts and Rt. 100 volunteers very seriously.

Thanks go out to every single volunteer. 

Enjoy the mostly litter-free roadsides for the next 11 months. Next Green Up Day is May 1, 2021.

See a full gallery of our photos from Green Up day here.

Lisa Scagliotti is Waterbury’s Green Up coordinator.