Rapid City Landfill received an unprecedented amount of trash and need the publics help to reduce it

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) -In just five days more than 3,700 tons of trash were collected by residents and one-hundred sixty volunteers during April’s city-wide clean-up week.

Lines of vehicles dropped off loads at the Rapid City Landfill stretching out to the highway all totaling up to 7.4 million pounds of household and community trash items.

Landfill outreach coordinator Ria Harper says that cars were wrapped around the facility waiting to unload trash.

She states “So last year we were open Monday through Saturday...this year we are open Monday through Friday, and we had an increase of about five to six hundred vehicles so, the lines were on the highway all day it was crazy.”

Harper says the major reason that so many people came out to drop trash off was because of spring cleaning and it was free.

She states “I think it’s the time of season too, so its spring everyone is getting in their houses, their garages...they are cleaning. They just want everything gone; it been stacked there since winter.”

Most of the trash collected goes into a grinder which is used to break down larger pieces to create a more compact airspace in the landfill

Harper says education is key to reducing how much trash goes into the landfill.

Harper states “We want to try and get people to start reducing how much they could buy or use. Making sure you use a reusable water bottle. Reduce, reuse, recycle...reuse as much as you can. Bottles, you know glass jars. The less we use the less we will have to put up there or recycle.”