The Braddock area deals with a lot of litter. BYP wants to help clean up the area and hopefully come up with a long term cleaning solution to keep Braddock beautiful, cleaner, safer, and healthier. We as a team care about the community and the earth. On February 4th, a pretty warm Thursday evening, the gardening team took a walk around to look deeper into litter areas. It was a sad sight for us to see, looking at garbage on almost every street and corner. There was a great variety of all kinds of trash, but what we saw most were candy wrappers and empty cigarette packs lying around everywhere.

The Braddock River area seems to suffer the most when it comes to littering. It is filled with all kinds of litter, both on the shore and in the water. This is why BYP is on a mission to fix this and restore beauty back to this river and make the Braddock river a safer environment for everyone including the animals there.

We looked into why this could become a big problem for our area and we found some answers. Our research revealed that trash laying around on the shore could eventually become toxic and dangerous. When trash lays on the river shore like Braddock’s, the trash can at some point get washed into the river. Same goes for the sewer drains in the area, and the litter that gets washed into them during the rain.

The sewer water is our pre-filtered source of drinking water as well. When trash lays around it leads to growth of germs and bacteria. So when trash with bacteria reaches sewer drains and river water it can spread germs/bacteria in the river water later becoming toxic.

 

 

 

 

 

Though Braddock does not offer recycling, you can always search for your nearest recycling area. Here on Maple Way in Braddock litter fills the alley way from the beginning to the end.

The litter here is mostly candy wrappers, chip bags, cigarette cartons, pop cans, plastic bottles, and plastics bags. Littering is bad for tour environment. It wastes our natural resources. When cans and bottles are discarded on the roadside instead of being recycled, more resources must be used to create cans and bottles from new materials

So what can we do to fix up and help out our community?

The first solution to littering is to always make sure you properly dispose of your garbage.

• Recycle all that can be recycled and put all other garbage in the proper containers.

• If you see a friend throwing something on the ground, ask them nicely to put in the trash receptacle instead of on the ground.

• If you see a piece of litter, pick it up and throw it away. But remember, never to touch anything that your not sure of-it may be sharp or be a hazardous material.

 

The Braddock Youth Project and I plan to help out our community we work and serve in by doing a litter clean up . I have worked on generating volunteers from anywhere and everywhere and so far I have gotten some fellow neighbors to volunteer. The University of Pitt Volunteer committee has agreed to come out and help us clean up the Braddock community. It could benefit the Braddock community more by having its own locals come out and lend a hand to clean our community and keep it looking beautiful.

We are doing a litter cleanup on April 2 from 10 am to 2 pm.