WRITTEN BY: ADAM WEINZAPFEL,
KTNRB AMERICORPS MEMBER
For most of us, heading to the grocery store is a weekly routine. It’s the most essential business you visit in your day-to-day life. Did you know that your weekly stops could be an excellent opportunity to make a difference for your community?
Many grocery store parking lots are large, paved areas that allow stormwater to pass over quickly, picking up litter as it goes. The litter travels with the water to where the engineering of the parking lot is designed to take water: the storm drains.
Like the storm drains you see in your neighborhoods or on the street, the drains at your local grocery likely can pick up trash, maybe even more so due to the high traffic area of grocery store parking lots. Why not show a little support and take 10 minutes out of your shopping run to clean a drain? It’s quick and easy, and most grocery stores already have bins to dispose of any waste you collect before heading in to shop.
If this sounds like a great opportunity to you, we’d love to help you out! If you adopt your local grocery’s storm drains at https://www.keeptnriverbeautiful.org/stormdrain, we’ll send you cleaning supplies and guidelines on how to safely clean your storm drain to get you started. This is a great opportunity to turn a weekly run into something that makes a difference.
Litter may seem like an impossibly large task to take on, but cleaning even one storm drain can reduce not only your impact, but your entire community’s impact on our waterways as well.
