Saratoga News
News
McGhee's cleaning up in Saratoga--'litter-ally'
By Cyrus Hedayati
Andrea McGhee has filled 13 bags with trash since she started picking up the litter along Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road. She and her 6-year-old daughter, Chloe, have spent a few hours every Saturday morning for more than a month cleaning up the area.
"If you can believe it, that's only one side of the road," she said. "I'm going to start picking up on the other side soon."
But McGhee said she isn't stopping there. Working with the city government, schools and even Google and Starbucks, she hopes to launch an anti-littering campaign to get to the source of the problem.
"I would like to see the city challenge everybody to be the cleanest city in America," said McGhee. "Los Gatos and Saratoga are pristine areas where people shouldn't be littering to the extent that they are now."
She first noticed the problem while jogging down Saratoga-Sunnyvale, deviating from her usual route. Seeing the roadside litter up close, she said, took her by surprise.
"I could not believe the amount of trash that I saw on the side of the road," she said. "From that morning on, I've just made a crusade of trying to do something about it."
On top of her routine cleanups of Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, McGhee encountered countless varieties of trash (even a kitchen sink), but one product seemed to show up again and again. Every week, she noticed that empty Starbucks cups and napkins filled a big part of her trash bag.
"I just asked them, 'How many cups are you serving?' And they said a whopping 8,000" in the Los Gatos/Saratoga area alone, she said.
McGhee informed the company of the litter problem in Saratoga, and it quickly got onboard to help. Starbucks has since organized its employees for "Starbucks to Starbucks" cleanup projects in Saratoga and Los Gatos.
"I thought, they hardly want to be part of the problem, they will be part of the solution once they know it's going on," she said.
McGhee, who works in marketing, also designed a new slogan to add onto Starbucks cups. The area of the cup with check boxes for light, decaf and other coffee choices would include a new addition: "Reality Check--Don't Litter."
"If they did something like that on every one of their cups and every one of their napkins that's polluting the environment, it would make a tremendous difference," she said.
McGhee would like to work with another company as well. She would like to see Google create a program to designate areas with excessive litter and organize cleanups.
"They could say, this area is in need of cleaning. And different areas could receive alerts," she said.
In addition, McGhee sent the city of Saratoga a four-page plan detailing various ways it could help keep its streets clean. One method she suggested was allowing residents to not just adopt freeways but to adopt areas of the city to keep clean.
"This is a way to keep the issue on the forefront on a daily basis," she said.
McGhee also said that educating youth would be an integral part of keeping litter out of the city. She has been in talks with local schools about organizing their students for cleanups.
"Really, global warming at the baseline, is litter," she said. "Something that's not very sexy in today's political arena is picking up trash."
The problem has grown steadily worse over the years, said McGhee, to the point that she's never seen Saratoga so dirty. More visitors and construction crews coming into the city could be part of the problem.
"What I suspect is happening is that people are driving with their open truck beds and they're eating their lunch, and their debris just goes flying," she said. "I found a full kitchen sink."
But while McGhee said she hopes her efforts with the city and companies like Starbucks will make a difference, the residents of Saratoga have to take responsibility for keeping it clean.
"I don't think it should just be the city, it should be the people," she said.
