Cleanup volunteers

Cascades Trash bash

2022 Trash bash results:

On October 16th Keep Loudoun Beautiful hosted our annual Cascades Trash Bash. Eighty eight volunteers including scouts, high schoolers, and adults collected a total of 35 bags weighting 447.5 lbs of trash, 13 bags weighting 131.6 lbs of recycling, 2 car tires 1 bike tire. Items also collected that will be repurposed include 7 pounds of balls, 1 kids play sign, 1 car seat, 2 scooters, 1 5 gallon bucket, and 3 PVC pipes. from the Sterling community and floodplain. 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.

In addition to trash and recycling we also received donations of 13 cans of food for the Dulles South food bank and 4 pairs of sneakers for our Gotsneakers program.  


Thank you to all our wonderful repeat and new volunteers! 

See you October of 2023!!!

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.

Registration is required 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, gloves, grabbers, fruit, granola bars and water 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

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. Any non-perishable, not expired food or toiletries will be accepted.

SNEAKER COLLECTION:
We will also be collecting gently used sneakers/cleats only for our GotSneakers fundraising program. Sizes 3.5 and higher are accepted.

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.

2021 Trash bash results:

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.