More than 40 volunteers showed up for the Memphis River Warriors’ first cleanup of the year Saturday.
During the cleanup, volunteers walked through the woods by McKellar Lake and collected Styrofoam, plastic and glass bottles, wrappers and other trash that had washed up on the banks.
In two hours, volunteers collected 580 pounds of recyclable materials.
The Memphis River Warriors, a registered student organization at the University of Memphis, works with other organizations like Memphis City Beautiful and the Sierra Club Chickasaw Group to clean up the area, which used to be a popular vacation spot.
Rachel Waters, a freshman psychology major at the U of M, got involved when she came to college because her older sister Grace Waters was part of the core group of initial volunteers.
“I started to go in support of her, but I very soon got hooked on the idea of making a change in the community and doing something for the greater good of millions of people,” Waters said. “Before coming to these cleanups, I had no idea of the magnitude of trash that could accumulate in one location.”