100 bags of trash, shopping carts, tires, bikes and more pulled from Little Hunting Creek
Some 35 volunteers collected more than 3,000 pounds of trash at State Sen. Scott Surovell’s annual Little Huntington Creek cleanup on Saturday, the senator said Tuesday in a press release.
The cleanup, which is now in its ninth year, was held at three sites in the Hybla Valley area: the Janna Lee Avenue bridge, the Audubon Estates mobile home park and at the Mount Vernon Plaza shopping center behind the Shoppers.
Four shopping carts, three tires and 10 bicycles were pulled from the creek
in addition to the plastic bottles, fast-food containers and other small pieces of garbage.
Surovell partnered with Del. Paul Krizek and the Friends of Little Hunting Creek for the cleanup. Volunteers from Mount Vernon High School, West Potomac High School, Sandburg Middle School and other parts of Northern Virginia all chipped in, Surovell said.
“I am grateful for the many volunteers that gave up their Saturday to help clean up their community,” Surovell said. “Little Hunting Creek is still full of trash, but if we can remove a ton of trash one weekend, that’s a ton of trash that does not make it to the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay.”
As in previous years, Surovell was critical of local retailers afterward, calling out Walmart, Aldi and Costco by name for what he says is their “lack of interest” in helping curb the creek’s chronic litter problem.
“U.S. 1’s retailers continue to show a lack of interest in controlling shopping cart removal, minimizing plastic bag consumption, or disposable containers in the corridor,” Surovell said, noting that Walmart’s and Aldi’s cart control systems didn’t stop more carts from ending up the stream.
He also blasted Costco for not implementing a cart control system after before the Hybla Valley store opened.
“I also warned Costco about this problem before they built their store and asked them to install an electronic cart control system after Fairfax County refused to mandate it through a proffer and they refused, insisting that they had different customers than Wal-Mart,” Surovell said.
Surovell credited Robert O’Hanlon’s Tree Service for helping pull the carts from the stream. More than 250 have been pulled from the Little Hunting Creek since Surovell’s cleanups began, he said.
“The shopping carts are especially disappointing given that I have repeatedly brought this issue to retailer’s attention and Wal-Mart went through the effort of installing a cart control system,” Surovell said in the release. “Unfortunately, the recovered carts were not equipped to function with their control system.”
Other large items pulled from the creek on Saturday included:
- Four shopping carts
- 10 bicycles and one tricycle
- Three tires
- Two children’s vehicles
- One snow shovel
- One katana (sword)
- One baby stroller
- A baby pool
- One flatscreen television
- Three computer monitors
- One guardrail
- A grill
I do not understand the attack against the Aldi grocery store. They are way south of Little Hunting Creek and not in the area of the cleanup sites. Their single location on Richmond Highway is some distance from any local streams so I just don’t see their carts ending up in local streams. Their quarter deposit system on the use of the carts incentivizes customers or others to return the carts and people do return the carts. I never see carts strewn about in their parking lot nor have I noticed them along nearby public streets. Aldi does not give customers bags (plastic or otherwise) and most customers bring their own reusable bags or they can purchase a reusable bag if the customer has none. Customers also will collect up empty cardboard boxes from within the store to gather their groceries and cardboard can go into home recycling bins after getting the groceries home. If the cardboard box is tossed improperly and ends up in the environment it does not endure like plastic. It biodegrades and in usually less than a years time it is disintegrated and recycled back into the environment. The other stores remain problematic. The carts we find in the Spring Bank neighborhood reflect the local merchants that don’t have cart retrieval programs or incentives. They would be Target, Giant Food and Lowes. We have a nearby Walmart and their system for locking shopping cart wheels is effective. I can’t recall seeing any of their carts in our neighborhood since they implemented their locking wheel devices. Target carts continue to show up abandoned on our neighborhood streets.
Thanks to Senator Scott Surovell, Delegate Paul Krizek, and all the volunteers who again pitched in last Saturday to clean up the trashiest stretch of stream in Fairfax County.
Their haul of 100 bags of trash and recyclables, 4 shopping carts, 3 tires, and more in Lee District adds to the trash collected by Friends of Little Hunting Creek volunteers a month ago. Working at 12 sites downstream of Route 1, in Mount Vernon District, 83 volunteers picked up 123 bags of trash and recyclables, 3 tires, a shopping cart, and more.
The Friends of Little Hunting Creek have been conducting annual cleanups since 2002, and when the Surovolunteers joined forces with us in 2012, it was an enormous boost to our effort to clean up Little Hunting Creek. But the trash just keeps on coming every year. Since we started keeping records in 2005, we have filled and hauled out of the creek almost 4,000 bags. Most are recyclables, and most are plastic water bottles. It’s appalling that this beautiful stream, in one of the richest counties in the country, could be so clogged with trash year after year. And Little Hunting Creek is not the only stream in Fairfax County that is afflicted with litter.
We hope our Board of Supervisors and elected representatives can find ways to solve the problem. Friends of Little Hunting Creek believe that a bottle deposit law, which would create an incentive to return beverage containers for the deposit, and a fee on plastic bags would prevent litter, as they have in other jurisdictions.
It’s election season—ask the candidates for state and county office in your district how they plan to address the litter problem in Fairfax County’s streams and waterways.
Betsy Martin, President, Friends of Little Hunting Creek