Volunteers clean up Columbia on Easter Sunday
COLUMBIA — Several volunteers picked up litter sticks and trash bags to clean up left over garbage at Flat Branch Park and the creek that runs through it in Columbia Sunday.
The Stream Cleanup at Flat Branch Park event was organized by Matt McCartney, a student at the University of Missouri.
McCartney said he believes in the difference a little time can make.
"Two hours of my time, two hours of your time what it does and it really is awesome for people to come out here with no general benefit to themselves and to give away their time to make everyone just have a better experience here," he said.
Volunteers and McCartney himself took their litter sticks along the MKT Trail and by the creek running through the park to pick up as much as much trash as they could find in the area.
The MKT trail ranked second in the nation for “Best Urban Trail” in the 2015 USA Today’s 10 Best Readers’ Choice Awards.
The City’s 4.7-mile MKT links to Boone County’s 4.2 miles of trail and the County’s trail connects with the State of Missouri’s Katy Trail State Park near McBaine.
Missouri's KATY trail extends 240 miles across Missouri from St. Charles in eastern Missouri to Sedalia in western Missouri.
One volunteer said she was around since before the City of Columbia made all of the changes to park and wanted to continue to see it beautiful and clean.
Another volunteer, Alex Heflin, said it is the instant gratification he gets from seeing the difference his time makes that keeps him volunteering.
"Anytime that I've come, there's a really big difference especially when everything starts to green up a lot more and you notice a lot more of the flowers and a lot of the greenery, you start to notice a lot more of the trash as well that's there so it's something that you really do see an immediate kind of reward by doing," Heflin said.
The event went from 2 P.M. until 4 P.M and by the end, volunteers had gathered several bags full of trash from the park - what McCartney called a successful day.