Annual Cascades Trash Bash-2022
Celebrate fall and enjoy the beautiful Virginia foliage with your family, neighbors, scout troop, or school group and make a difference in your community by cleaning up litter around the Cascades area and Sugarland Run flood plain.
When: Sunday October 16th, 2022 starting at 12:30 pm.
Where: We’ll be meeting at the Quarterpath Trace Community Center, at 20430 Quarterpath Trace Circle, Sterling, VA 20165, which is at the intersection of Algonkian Pkwy and Quarterpath Trace Circle. Restrooms will be available at the Quarterpath Community Center.
This year we are requiring registration for everyone who’d like to participate. We are trying to assign areas beforehand to be more prepared and help things move smoother.
We will provide safety vests, bags, grabbers (we will ask small groups to share 1 grabber), fruit, and water/lemonade served in an environmentally friendly manner, so please remember to bring your own reusable water bottle! In line with our mission, this will be a “plastic bottle-free zone” so be prepared; we never ever provide single use bottled water bottles at any of our events (after picking up your first few dozen, you’ll understand why).
We are especially looking for able-bodied volunteers, 16 years or older, to help in the floodplain area, where the bulk of the trash and litter will be. The floodplain area is muddy and close to streams, so waterproof boots, waders, or sturdy shoes are a must. We do go into the water that is waist high. We also need people who will help haul full bags of trash/recycling and tires from the flood plan to the pick ups truck we will have nearby.
For volunteers cleaning along roadways, please wear proper footwear for walking. We have reusable gloves to share but we highly recommend bringing yours (they can be your gardening gloves).
Scout troops– We have KLB badges for the Scouts! If you are a Girl Scout or Boy Scout troop, please indicate in the sign up your troop number, age of troop, and the number of kids and adults participating.
REUSE YOUR T-SHIRTS FROM PRIOR YEARS
In an effort to reduce our ecological footprint, we are not printing new t-shirts for this event. But we will have t-shirts from past years that you can take that are brand new, never used. We’ve seen so many t-shirts at donation centers that end in landfills so we are trying to figure out better giveaways. However, we do encourage you to bring your KLB t-shirt from previous events you have attended. We will also have safety vests for visibility.
FOOD DRIVE
We will be collecting food for Dulles South Food Pantry, and they are particularly in need of these items (but any non-perishable, not expired food or toiletries will be accepted). If you can contribute with some of these, that will be very much appreciated but it is not a requirement to participate.
Shaped Pasta Noodles
Tomato Paste
White Beans
Chickpeas/Garbanzo Beans
Canned Chicken
Sardines
Canned Green Beans
Canned Corn
C Bar Soap
SNEAKER COLLECTION:
We will also be collecting gently used sneakers/cleats only for our GotSneakers fundraising program. Sizes 3.5 and higher are accepted. We’ll make sure they get a second chance to be useful, either for somebody else or to be properly recycled.
HELP US FIND MORE LOCATIONS TO CLEAN:
If you have seen litter in the Cascades area (park, roadway, school, anything) that is in need of folks to clean up, please email alicia@keeploudounbeautiful.org and report it so we can add it to our list of areas to clean up.
COMMUNITY SERVICE HOURS
Since the Cascades Trash Bash & Food Drive is a community service event, it most likely qualifies for community service hours for your school, scout troop, or other organization. Just be sure to bring your forms for us to sign.
Registration now open:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080D4DA4A82DA7FB6-cascades
2021 Trash bash:
On Sunday, October 17th, 2021, Keep Loudoun Beautiful (KLB) organized a clean up event in Sterling, VA. It was a beautiful day for the 108 volunteers to clean up a number of areas along roadways, behind schools, and in the heavily polluted floodplain area. A total of 32 large bags were consolidated to hold the 642 lbs of trash collected by the group, along with 13 consolidated bags of recycling weighing 87.86 lbs. In addition to the trash collected, 14 tires were removed from the floodplain area.
Tires will be taken to the Loudoun County Landfill for recycling. Bulk scrap metal will be taken to Potomac Metals for recycling. Metal cans, plastic and glass bottles will go to the Loudoun County Recycling Center. All remaining litter that cannot be recycled will be taken to the landfill for disposal. Food donations were collected and donated to the Dulles South Food Pantry.
Special thanks to the groups that participated including: the Potomac Falls High School Green Team, the Young Adult Group from the Reston Bible Church, American Heritage Girls Troop 1975, Pack 905, Troop 70246, Girl Scout Troop 241, Girl Scout Troop 70182, Troop 572, and Troop 70131. We would also like to recognize cousins Masoud Hellali and Toryalai Helali, who are Afghan refugees who came to America in August 2021 and joined us for the afternoon “to give back to the community who has welcomed them”.
Thank you to Solarpunk Life and Joe Hines for coming out to film the event. Joe was a great help to the cleanup crew working in the floodplain area. Please check out the video he made of the clean up event.