West Frankfort to place dumpsters out for Annual Clean Up Day

Street Commissioner Tara Fasol-Chambers said the council is always pleased be able to participate by coordinating efforts with the city’s trash provider, Midwest Waste in Marion, to supplement the great efforts of hundreds of volunteers in cleaning up the town by providing six dumpsters to placed for residential dumping, one week after the scheduled clean-up day, which is set for April 20.

“I can’t say enough about this group that puts on the clean up,” said Fasol-Chambers. “What they do is so much bigger than most can imagine, unless you have come out and taken part. The amount of planning it takes, the kids that they reach and teach about keeping our community clean, the volunteers that they pull to do such an enormous amount of cleaning up and then the giving back that they do with those volunteers through food and prizes and t-shirts is simply amazing. West Frankfort is lucky to have such dedicated citizens who don’t just come up with big ideas but get their hands dirty, literally, trying to get out and make a visible difference in the place we all call home. I think I can speak for our entire council when I say we are blessed to just be able to help anyway we can and what we do is very small.”

The commissioner said the city’s contact allows for six dumpsters to be placed out for clean-up day and she has arranged for those to be located and rotated out from two locations, the parking lot south of the police station on Poplar Street and the parking lot of the city’s water shed, located east of Charles off Lincoln Street.

“We will have one placed at each location starting the day of the clean up on April 20 and when they get full, another will be brought to replace it, until we reach our six,” Fasol-Chambers said. “We typically have them out for about one week after the clean-up day.”

The commissioner said she wanted to give the community a heads up on the week of the dumpster availability in advance but promises to have more details of what can be dumped and other dumping locations available for items that aren’t going to be allowed in West Frankfort, closer to the time of the event.

“I’m getting all that together now so the council can give as much information to help people get their stuff to where it needs to go as possible,” she said. “We are still a few months out but hopefully, this will give people some time to prepare for cleaning out garages and attics or whatever they need and we will just keep getting the details out as they become available to us.”

The No Name Group handles the actual Clean-Up Day event, which not only schedules and coordinates the volunteering of hundreds of people to clean up the town but also incorporates school children by educating them about litter and keeping the community clean. This year, the group has also begun a logo contest that will give local kids a stab at getting their design on t-shirts and other promotions for this year’s event.