‘Golden Tire Award’ up for grabs as Eddy County volunteers clean up public lands

Which Eddy County municipality will come away with the “Golden Tire Award” this year?

We’ll find out after a weeklong cleanup competition called “Better Together” that starts tomorrow and runs through Sept. 24.

The competition challenges citizens to hold trash clean up events on county land throughout the week. A “Golden Tire Award” will be presented to the municipality whose citizens collectively remove the most trash from county spaces. Other prizes will be given for largest amount of trash cleaned up at a single event, most participants at a single event, and most trash picked up by a single group or individuals over the weeklong event, according to organizers.

Not sure where to start? Visit the Better Together website, which provides photos, GPS coordinates and directions to dump sites throughout the county. But if you know a spot needing a sprucing that doesn’t appear on the website, have at it, organizers said.

“Do not feel limited by these sites or by thinking you need to organize a massive clean-up event to participate,” states the Better Together website. “Just look around your neighborhood to find litter that needs picking up or take a garbage bag with you when you walk your dog this evening. Every bit helps clean up Eddy County and can be counted towards the Golden Tire Award.”

You can document cleanup efforts through QR codes posted near all dumpsters and on Better Together flyers (see flyer  below). The code will send you to an online form to submit documentation of trash collected, number of participants in the group, and the municipality you’d like your trash points to go toward. Submissions can also be emailed to Better.Together.NPLD@gmail.com.

The Better Together competition is part of the National Environmental Education Foundation‘s annual National Public Lands Day, the nation’s largest, single-day volunteer event for public lands, held annually on the fourth Saturday in September.