Greg Manley has intel on the Northside 412 Redder Uppers as this year’s Friends of the Riverfront and Allegheny CleanWays Litter League teams get ready for the Opening Pickoff competition this Saturday in Millvale.
He lives on the North Side and knows that last year’s overall champions have been staging litter in anticipation of the six-week competition, plotting to retain their title from last year. But, the Friends of the Riverfront’s community outreach specialist said, the North Siders should be watching their trash bags and backs: Pretty Up Beechview has the highest tournament collections for the past three years. The Roaring Lions from Bethel Park, a new team with members from that service organization, are ready to go. The U.S. Steel River Raptors team is waging a litter battle among its Mon Valley plants, he has heard, an internal competitive plot that could mean a higher overall collection total.
To date 10 teams have registered for the fourth annual competition, and Manley said others — neighborhoods and small businesses and colleague teams from larger organizations and companies — still can join in the fun. Fees for the first division, which covers 10 cleanup kits, is $100; larger businesses and organizations pay $1,000. Individuals who want to pitch in to the effort as a free agent can be added to a team for a $20 fee. All just need to head to Millvale and sign in before the whistle blows to start the 90-minute competition. Manley said registration will close before noon near Strange Roots brewery; at 12:30 p.m. the collecting begins.
Braddock, Clearview Credit Union, Penn Hills, ACLD Tillotson School, Squirrel Hill and Moody’s round out the teams registered before Saturday’s start, according to the news release.
In its first three years, Litter League players collected 140,000 pounds of “improperly managed manufactured waste” from Allegheny County streets and greenspaces, according to a news release. The league has proven 10 times as effective as individual litter pickups. The fees paid cover the cleanup kits and administrative costs, and the organizations will still accept sponsors to help further defray their expenses.
The Millvale Pickoff is the first of three distinct competitions in the league. A Mid Season Meet is set for Braddock on Friday, May 10, at 6 p.m. The championship event is scheduled for Friday, May 31, at 6 p.m. Downtown.
Teams can have up to 50 members, Manley said, but the competitions are limited to 10 participants from each team. Throughout the six weeks the league boundaries are all public thoroughfares within Allegheny County, and teams are free to collect litter anywhere and in addition to the three competition locations and events. Teams will be using a tracker software to record their collections through the Litter League section of Friends of the Riverfront’s website.
Manley will update the website with team results each Friday, and he will be on “Saturday Light Brigade” at 7:20 a.m. on 88.3 WRCT on, of course, Saturdays. That broadcast can also be heard at its site online.
In addition to the Litter League start, Allegheny CleanWays and Friends of the Riverfront are also cleaning up the public trail at the Millvale Riverfront Park that morning. A Tireless and Water Trail Cleanup and Dumpsite Cleanup is also taking place Saturday in Troy Hill. According to the two nonprofits’ websites, no further volunteers are needed for those efforts.
But all volunteers, all Litter League teams and their supporters are invited to a volunteer appreciation event at Strange Roots to enjoy discounted food and drink and each other’s company. It’s that friendly of a competition.
Through the season teams earn points, according to the rules, and they can win top bragging rights for this year and prizes by accomplishing trashy challenges. The teams can best their rivals at a litter pickin’ showdown, for example, and organize cleanups using a garbage hot spot map. They just need to adhere to the rules and report results to earn points.
The competition ends with one overall award and four prizes — overall champion, heavy lifters, helpers, cleanup artists and archivists.
As Earth Day approaches on Monday, Manley said the Litter League effort highlights how difficult it is to clean up communities and the world, too, as well as having fun. “From our cleanups, we can tell a better story about litter,” he said, “how it arrives and how to take care of it. The Litter League is a way we can dynamize the story of litter. We can not only reward people who pick up the most but also record the most litter collected and the people who reuse or re-create what people throw away.”
From his own research and past Litter League results, he believes that this year’s teams will be on a trajectory to collect 204,000 pounds or 102 tons of trash. That is an amount equal to how much trash one individual will generate in a lifetime.
“That should put into perspective what we are doing with collecting the trash,” Manley continued. “There are ways we can significantly reduce our impact, but the ubiquity of plastic and the lack of producer responsibility is the major stumbling blocks to real reform.”
He is heartened by the addition of one of the new teams, the Tillotson School. The students represent the first youth team for the competition.
“I am excited to see what strategy that they employ,” Manley said. “A dream of mine is that this Litter League becomes a pathway for young, athletic environmentalists – [something that can] marry their love of sports and play that comes so easily to us when we are young with stewardship and environmentalism. They have more pressure [on them] than any other generation. They live with all these crazy statistics with litter and waste.”
Anyone with questions about the Litter League competition can reach Manley at Greg@friendsoftheriverfront.org. Both organizations have many other volunteer opportunities and activities, too.
Helen is a copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but she's currently on strike. Contact her at hfallon@unionprogress.com.