Trash blows. Stow it.
That’s the theme of the new anti-litter campaign that Keep Aransas County Beautiful is instituting. Borrowing from a similar non-profit organization in Alabama, the local conservation group will post the theme along with a cartoon depicting litter flying from pickup truck beds and boats at all boat ramps in the county.
“I made contact with [the Alabama group] and I asked them if it was OK if we used their artwork, and they were very happy to help us,” Keep Aransas County Beautiful President D’Ann Williams said.
In announcing the campaign earlier this week on Facebook, Williams also shared a video that a Flour Bluff Intermediate School student and his father created in January to coincide with his science fair project. The project measured the speed at which Styrofoam cups would fly from a truck bed.
“The magic number for speed before the cups fly out is around 55 miles per hour,” Jace Tunnell narrates in the video.
Tunnell’s son, 10-year-old Jack, is happy about the renewed attention his project and video are receiving.
“My science fair project was about encouraging people to not pollute and not do bad things like that,” Jack Tunnell said.
Keep Aransas County Beautiful holds two cleanup events on land and two on the water every year. For Williams, the major source of the litter became clear quickly
“Most of the debris that we get cleaned up out of the areas all comes out of vehicles – boats and trailers and such,” she said.
Williams is hopeful that her campaign will be successful in cutting down on that type of trash. If it is, she plans to expand it to bumper stickers and billboards.
“You hope that over time people get more cognizant of where they’re storing their trash in their vehicles and their boats as well and take more ownership in keeping things off the highways,” she said.
