Since September of 2021, Lee Taylor has taken on a mission to clean up litter in the Yelm and Rainier areas after he discovered the state of the McIntosh Lake pull-off and several fishing holes while he was out with his grandchildren.
Taylor has collected an eye opening amount of garbage throughout the greater-Yelm area.
Since he began his efforts, Taylor said he has collected 352 bags of garbage, along with 38 tires, six televisions and other miscellaneous litter. During his time cleaning up the community, he has found car parts, furniture, batteries, diapers, clothes, drink containers and over 100 needles and other drug paraphernalia-related items.
Despite the work that has already been completed, this is just the tip of the iceberg for Taylor.
“Some of these spots are dumping spots for people. I’ve gone in several times with as little as 20 bags of garbage to turn some of these areas from a disaster to being clean,” Taylor told the Nisqually Valley News in an interview. “I started this effort a few years ago when I took my wife’s grandchildren fishing at McIntosh Lake. We pulled off, and there was garbage everywhere like it had been dumped out of someone’s trunk. It was disgusting.”
Taylor said he has communicated with the City of Yelm about the problem and was told by the city that crews only manage garbage within and around the perimeter of the city. He also contacted Thurston County, which only picks up litter in certain areas. The county provided Taylor with garbage bags to pick up trash.
Once he filled the bags, Taylor would let the county know where the garbage bags of trash were located and then they would pick the bags up.
“When I got started with this, I realized that it’ll look better for a while, but after a couple of months, the garbage starts to pile up again,” Taylor said. “I just want to try to encourage other people to start picking up garbage. It seems like there’s a lot of garbage on the roads along 507 through Rainier.”
Taylor admitted he’s “not the greatest” at organizing community efforts, but he’d like to see a community push to clean up around the city.
“If I had 10, 20 or 30 others doing this and cleaning up the streets they live on, this could go away. If they did this once every few months, this garbage could disappear,” he said. “If we had 100 people cleaning up these roads around here, it could be clean, at least for a couple of months.”
Taylor believes more public outreach should be done to remind and encourage citizens in the Yelm and Rainier area not to litter.
“It might be as simple as posting signs that say ‘please do not litter,’ but you don’t see any of those around besides by the movie theater,” Taylor said. “I wonder if we increase the campaign, that this litter could decrease over some time.”
For Taylor, he simply wants people to take care of their community and understand the importance of keeping their towns and cities, and the world, clean.
“It could be as simple as 10 other people joining me in these cleanup efforts. I see others trying to get organized with groups of people trying to clean, but I want to see more people who care,” Taylor said. “I care because we live in a beautiful town and a beautiful world.”
Taylor can be contacted by email at leetaylorpoa@yahoo.com.
