About 18 months ago, a local woman set out to make Kentucky’s gorgeous riverways and banks more pristine. And what she has accomplished has been simply amazing, getting an army of volunteers together to clean things up one bag at a time.
“The more I show, the more they want to get involved. It’s amazing,” says Whitney Lewis, who we first met last year when she was on her way to collecting 10,000 bags of trash in just a few months.
“Well, actually the first 5,000 bags I did by myself. Then, after the 5,000, people started joining in to help. Now, last week we had 89 people submit photos of over 3,000 bags picked up. At least a thousand a week, it’s been runnin’.”
Lewis has used her Facebook page, A Cleaner Kentucky, to spread the word, and the Commonwealth has responded. Last month, they picked up their 100,000th bag of trash!
“We all work really hard to see how many we can get in a day and see the totals. It’s really nice to turn the totals in at the end of the week and see how much we’ve done”, says volunteer Teresa Rakes.
Fellow volunteer Sarah McMullan agrees that the effort is worth it. “I got tired of seeing all the needles. I have grandkids and I started picking them up. And here I am, 22 years later, still picking up with Miss Whitney!”
“It is amazing when I can’t find trash and I’ve had this crazy thing going on lately where people steal my trash, which is awesome”, says Lewis. “I mean, that’s the best problem to have, right? But I’ll come back to pick up the bags and someone’s already picked them up.”
Whitney’s teenage daughter Kendall couldn’t believe what she was hearing when her mom first told her of her plans.
“I’m gonna be honest with you. I was like ‘what? Why are you doin’ that?’ But of course, she’s always been in nature and stuff, so at the same time I was like ‘well, you do you. You go do it then!’”, says Kendall, who often goes along to help.
As for Whitney’s next goal?
“I may eat my words, but I don’t think so. A million bags by the end of 2025. I want Kentucky to be the cleanest state in the country.”
