Many people don’t even want to take the time to pick up trash in their own yards, let alone stoop to pick up someone else’s litter along a busy roadway.
But that’s exactly what Bob Yeager and his family have been doing along a busy stretch of Rt. 378 in Lower and Upper Saucon townships–in both Northampton and Lehigh counties–for more than 10 years now.
The Yeagers used their business’s name (Bons Embroidery) when they adopted the two-mile section of the state highway in 2006–under the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s (PennDOT) Adopt-a-Highway program–and they’ve continued to clean it three to four times a year ever since.
In 2016 they were recognized with “10 year participant” yellow signs under the Bons Embroidery blue signs that recognize their efforts at Walter Street in Lower Saucon Township and at Saucon Valley Road in Upper Saucon.
“When we did our first cleanup we collected 96 bags of trash,” Yeager said. “Now it averages between 15 and 30, depending on how much gets thrown out by the public litterbugs.”
Due to the high volume of traffic on the road, there is some trash that inevitably blows off passing cars and trucks, “but for the most part it is litterbugs” who throw everything from empty soda cans to candy bar wrappers to packaging materials out the windows of their vehicles, he noted.
“We have found everything but a handgun in our cleanup effort (let your imagination run wild),” Yeager joked.
Per the Adopt-a-Highway program guidelines, the first cleanup of the year has to be done by Earth Day (April 22), and at least two must be performed each year.
White trash bags filled with collected litter lined Rt. 378 in Lower Saucon Township approaching Black River Road following the Yeager family’s spring cleanup just before Earth Day last month.
PennDOT provides the materials needed for the cleanup–such as safety vests, trash bags and work gloves–and there is a minimum two-year commitment when adopting a state highway.
Participants must be age eight or older, with at least one adult (18 or older) for every eight minors. Minors must also have parental or their guardian’s permission to participate.
Yeager said that although they are only required to clean the road twice a year, they typically clean it in April, July and October, as well as during the wintertime.
“We do a cleanup in January but PennDOT allows you to skip it, due to the frozen ground,” Yeager said.
“I am very proud of this effort and will continue,” he stated.
He added that any metal that is picked up is taken to H. Blinderman & Son in Hellertown for recycling and everything else is bagged and properly disposed of, with PennDOT collecting the bagged roadside litter.
Passing motorists over the second-to-last weekend in April may have observed the cleanup in progress, or the white garbage bags that lined the road every 50 yards or so in its wake.
For more information about PennDOT’s Adopt-a-Highway program, click here.
For more information about the Lower Saucon Township adopt-a-road program, which allows local businesses and organizations to adopt township roads for cleanup, click here.
