200 Elephants! City Residents Bring In 800 TONS of Material to Landfill During Cleanup Week
Members of the City's Public Works Department clean up litter and trash along Sturgis Road during 2023 Cleanup Week activities.
(City Photo/Darrell Shoemaker)
200 ELEPHANTS…
CITY RESIDENTS BRING IN
800 TONS OF MATERIAL
TO LANDFILL DURING CLEANUP WEEK
Volunteer Teams Collect 7 Tons of Trash
RAPID CITY, SD—And the results are in….
Rapid City area residents brought in more than 800 tons – yes, TONS – of material across the scales at the Rapid City Landfill during last week’s Community Cleanup Week!
“Crazy!” exclaimed Solid Waste Education and Outreach Coordinator Ria Hannon after tabulating the results. “The average elephant weighs about four tons. So area residents brought in the weight of 200 elephants in trash in just five days.”
But the great results don’t stop there. Hannon says the work of more than 130 teams – 1,300 volunteers – yielded more than seven tons – yes, TONS – of trash in those pink trash bags that were bundled up and placed along curbs throughout the community last week. And Habitat for Humanity hauled away approximately three tons of material from the City’s Solid Waste campus during cleanup week.
In terms of visitation to the Landfill, Hannon reports more than 4,100 vehicles passed through the Landfill scales during the Monday to Friday time frame of Cleanup Week, April 17-21. The number compares to 3,833 vehicles during the Monday to Friday time frame of the 2022 Cleanup Week and 3,372 vehicles that passed went to the Landfill during the 2021 cleanup week which included an extra day.
“It was an absolutely tremendous week of activity and a great outpouring of collective work by the teams and individuals to clean up our community and for city and area residents to clean out items from their attics, garages and yards.”
This year’s activities marked the 52nd year for the Community Cleanup Week in Rapid City.