Serving Barnwell County and it's neighbors since 1852
Some of the volunteers who came out to clean up the Town of Allendale.
Volunteers pick up trash from a roadside in Allendale.
Littered trash can be found in ditches and bushes on the side of roads throughout Allendale.
For long-time Allendale resident Randy Creech, spending a cold Saturday morning picking up trash on the side of Bluff Road wasn’t just about making Allendale look better. It was about taking the first step reversing a mindset that he believes has held Allendale back, and reintroducing a tradition of community stewardship.
“We need to understand that people with low morale go around and toss their trash, basically unwillingly,” Creech said. “We have to go back to the tradition of taking care of the community. … True tradition starts from the roots.”
This sentiment was widespread among members of the Allendale community who spent November 3 and 4 in orange vests, filling green trash bags with waste that had spent years building up on the side of the community’s roads. Allendale Town Council member Marlon Creech, who brought his sons out to clean up trash, estimated that between 50–75 people were spread throughout the county, from the streets of Fairfax and Allendale to the farm roads that surround it.
In Allendale, all types of litter — from Styrofoam carryout boxes to used diapers to car tires — can be found on the side of almost any road.
“Somebody had a whole party,” joked Joe Joseph Loadholt with his friends as he picked through a pile of cracked red solo cups and water bottles that had been dumped in a ditch.
Dealing with the causes of trash pollution requires larger political and corporate changes, as data from the United States Census Bureau shows a direct relationship between inequality and the presence of litter. In wealthy communities, litter has less of a presence while in low-income communities, litter is a larger issue. In addition to being an eyesore, trash and litter have a wide array of negative effects on public and environmental health. These effects range from the destruction of wildlife to carcinogens like per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances and styrene leaching into nearby water and soil.
However, what this day was mostly about, Randy Creech said, is reversing an unaddressed community mindset that prevents Allendale from reaching its full potential. To him, litter within the community isn’t just a public health concern, but also the reflection of a lack of self-confidence.
“This is one of the things we want to start to do in the neighborhood,” Randy Creech said. “Clean your neighborhood. Clean your yard. Clean yourself, and also clean your mind about certain things that might be not favorable or helpful to yourself.”
Despite the two-day cleanup, there are hundreds of miles of roads spread throughout the 408-square-mile county. Councilman Creech said that in addition to organizing the community around cleaning up trash, he is also pursuing legal changes to littering within town council to cut off littering at the source. These changes include stronger enforcement of pre-existing littering laws and fines, as well as getting new cameras to capture littering as it happens. Council member Kathy Tharin, who joined in the clean-up, said she would support an ordinance with these changes.
“Not every time [will] we have the numbers that we have as volunteers,” Creech said. “We have to also put in solutions to stop it. Educating comes first, and then upholding those fines comes second. We thank the citizens and volunteers for coming out to clean the trash, but it’s something that shouldn’t [have to] be done.”
Loadholt, a 2019 graduate of Allendale-Fairfax High School, said he and his friends would come out again to clean up litter.
“Anytime,” Joe said. “Always for our community, for our people, and to see our Black people together.”
The habit of littering in Allendale will take time to break, as acknowledged by Tharin, who said the day after she cleaned up part of a road, new litter appeared. However, getting young people involved, as both Tharin and Councilman Creech agree, is part of preventing the habit of littering from forming.
“If you start them out young, they develop good habits and good traditions as they get older,” Councilman Creech said. “You won’t have to worry about that later on down the line because if they’re not doing it here, they won’t be doing it wherever their lives lead them. We want to instill good values and good morals here.”
