After more than 200 volunteers showed up for the Mayor’s Seventh Annual Grand River Clean Up on Oct. 9, the West Michigan Environmental Action Council, who helped sponsor the event, tallied up the amount of trash collected.

The effort yielded 15,689 pounds of trash from 10 miles along the Grand River at various locations in the Grand Rapids area. WMEAC Communications Coordinator Daniel Schoonmaker said while this number falls short of last year’s 16,000-pound effort, the organization is happy with the final tally when considering a forced reschedule. The event was originally slated for Sept. 18, but inclement weather forced WMEAC to push it back to Oct. 9.

“That’s a bit shy of what we had last year, but, to be perfectly honest, it did exceed our expectations for the rain date. We would have been a little disappointed with that for the original date, which we would have expected maybe a quarter of the turnout more.”

The refuse collected included incidental trash like plastic and glass bottles, plastic bags, fishing and camping equipment and cigarette butts. But there was also a number of uncommon discarded items, which included tires, television sets, discarded clothing, shoes, roofing shingles and a discarded bed complete with a mattress.

“Here’s the theory,” said Schoonmaker, who came across the mattress. “People have loads of things they want to take to the dump, and for whatever reason they don’t take them to the dump and they end up in the woods, (and) by the river is one of the more convenient places to throw things off.”

Schoonmaker added that while coming across larger discarded items no longer surprises him, he still wonders why people would blatantly and intentionally discard items along the river.

“Once you get out there in the woods a couple times, you start coming across (blatantly discarded items),” he said. “Like the group I was in – we came across a stack of 12 tires. Those don’t float there – people go out there and drop them off. A lot of things we find are honest mistakes … but a lot of things are malicious like that with people just going out there and dumping things in the woods.”

Sponsored by Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell, Wyoming Mayor Jack Poll, Grandville Mayor James Buck and Walker Mayor Rob VerHeulen, this year’s effort focused on segments along the river in the four cities. Volunteers began the clean up in downtown Grand Rapids before being bused to the other three locations.

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