Last Saturday, Poplarville and Picayune hosted citywide cleanup events.
Residents volunteered their time on a beautiful Saturday morning to pick up trash on the streets of our cities.
Most noteworthy were the number of young people helping with the cleanup effort.
After witnessing firsthand the negative impact of littering, they will think before dropping a piece of trash on the ground.
Hopefully, they will share this important information with their friends and family.
Our roadsides, parks, fields and neighborhoods should be treasured, not trashed.
And it’s not just for our benefit, but for tourists and potential residents as well.
No one wants to move to an area littered with garbage.
Saturday’s events were a great way to kick-start a movement toward environmental consciousness in Pearl River County.
When you clean up trash on the streets, you may also be saving the life of a bird or other animal who might mistake a cigarette butt for a piece of food.
We must not litter our bodies of water either. Too many times, we have read articles and seen pictures depicting wildlife such as fish, birds and whales tangled in plastic or poisoned by some other type of rubbish.
While cleanup events like these are great, it’s also important to educate children and adults about the dangers of littering.
If we all do our part to educate ourselves and others about the many harmful effects of littering, we are one step closer to a trash free Pearl River County.
We would like to recognize the volunteers and coordinators of these events.
It’s inspiring to see our area’s residents come together for this worthwhile effort.