Time is ripe for Clean-up Week

Drive along any road and the roadsides will usually be littered.

Get out and walk along the road. Look over the bank. You are liable to see all sorts of trash including chairs, sofas, electronics, abandoned appliances, just about any discarded household item. Walk along streams in Shasta County and you will find much the same sort of debris. Occasionally a group gets together and has a drive to clean up some of the mess. Slobs, however, will always dump more trash. Roads and streams become informal trash dumps.

This happens for several reasons. One is that there are people who are just plain slobs who won't take the responsibility for anything in which they don't see a profit for themselves. Thus, they take the shortest route to discarding, "Just get rid of it. Shove it over the bank, whatever."

Fully as responsible, or maybe even more so, are the fees charged when someone pays to have the junk hauled, or even when they personally haul the debris to the dump. Take old appliances, mattresses, furniture, and other worn or discarded material to the dump and it costs a small fortune.

There has to be a better way. Recently, my son, Jim, and I were talking. He told me of the time he was living in Santa Clara. Once a year the city sets up four sections of the city for "Clean up week."

People gather up their trash and clean out their garages. They pile everything out on the curb. People go over the trash and are welcome to take anything they want, can use or recycle. He reports seeing bicycles, usable computers, antiques, collectibles, books, clothing, tools - name it and someone is almost sure to have discarded it somewhere.

Trucks patrol those streets, sometimes with front end loaders, looking for good, usable or repairable items that they pick up and haul off .to use, recycle, sell or possibly give to charity organizations.

At the end of each week's section, city trucks come with loaders.

They pick up, crush and haul off anything left in the piles.

It is like a giant, free, flea market or yard sale where everyone benefits. The home owners get rid of unwanted things. Recyclers, people and the poor recycle and use materials. The reduced loads of trash benefit the dump. Everyone benefits.

It sounds to me like a wonderful, workable solution to a big problem.