These Kansas Citians pick up litter on our streets. Here’s what they see & wish you knew

Editor’s note: This story is part of The Star’s series “Talking Trash.” All of the stories were inspired by questions and concerns we heard from Kansas Citians through listening sessions, an online callout and other conversations in our community. Stories will run throughout April, and you can find them all here. You can share your thoughts by emailing kcq@kcstar.com or filling out the form at the bottom of the story. We’d love for you to join Star staff at a community cleanup event this month (more on that below).

None of us want to admit to littering. Yet somehow, trash seems to find its way around Kansas City.

It can feel like litter is everywhere — on our streets, in our parks, on the highways.

According to the city’s latest resident satisfaction survey, only 28% of residents are satisfied with the cleanliness of our city streets and public areas. That’s the lowest it’s been since 2005 — down 4% from last year, and more than 10% lower than the average for other large cities.

At The Star, when we asked readers’ questions and concerns about trash around the metro, we heard from dozens and dozens of you who were upset about the litter.

While municipalities around the metro say they’re trying their best to keep the streets clean, we’ve heard from Kansas Citians who got fed up waiting for answers from the city or the state and took matters into their own hands — taking on the task of regularly, voluntarily picking up litter in their neighborhoods.

It’s dirty. It’s hard work. And it has also brought people together.

Alicia Grindstaff, one of the residents who regularly picks up trash near her house by Arrowhead Stadium said, “If you pick up litter once, you’ll never litter ever again.”

While reading may not quite pass along the experience of picking up litter, these are the stories of some of our neighbors who do — and what they wish you knew.

“IS THERE NO PRIDE?”

Almost every day, with a picker in one hand and a trash bag in the other, Chris Morales walks up and down streets in his neighborhood, Indian Mound in the Historic Northeast, to pick up trash.

He’s been doing this routine more steadily in the past six years, but he said he’s been picking up trash since the day he bought his house in 1980.

Sometimes when it’s nice enough out, others join him.

In the warmer months, Morales and some of his neighbors will choose a couple streets and do walkabouts together, cleaning up the litter along the way.

On his regular strolls, Morales said he sees cans, candy wrappers, shot bottles, masks, plastic spoons and containers, cardboard, old newspapers and magazines all over the streets.

He said that Kansas City is a beautiful city, but having trash all over the streets gives the impression that he and his neighbors don’t care about their environment.

“Is there no pride?” Morales said. “Do you want to raise your kids there? Do you want people to come down and think that these people don’t care about anything?”

Read more about how to get involved in a cleanup near you.

He said he wished neighborhood-wide cleanups happened more frequently and in coordination with other neighborhoods, and that there was more information more easily available to people about the trash services the city offers.

“There’s no need to dump tires or trash in the parks or in your area,” Chris Morales said. “We have city services.”

“UNNATURAL FOR THE HUMAN EYE”

When Mallory Weber walks near Cliff Drive and Kessler Park, also in the Historic Northeast, it’s the plastic water bottles that catch her eye.

Along with the bottles, she often encounters wrappers, household items and even full bags of trash.

A few years ago, she said the amount of litter got to a point that she couldn’t walk by the area without doing something about it.

“Just seeing the woods be treated that way is disturbing, and when you see it when you’re walking your dog or going on a walk or run and you see it every day, it does start to wear,” Weber said. “I feel like it’s unnatural for the human eye to look into the woods and see trash.

“It’s not natural to see the forest and see all of this human, man-made crap that’s everywhere. It just looks bad and creates a negative feeling.”

Weber said she wishes that Kansas Citians showed a greater respect for the natural environment, and that more people would be more mindful of how they get rid of their stuff, whether it’s something as small as a potato chip bag to a full extra bag of trash.

Read more about where our trash ends up in Kansas City.

FRIENDS WHO CLEAN TOGETHER

Around eight years ago, Kathy LaFrensen got a call from her partner who was driving east on Red Bridge Road and saw a woman picking up trash.

This was news — usually, LeFrensen was the one out there with the bag. Known around the neighborhood as the lady who picks up trash with headphones on, she’s been at it for more than 23 years.

LaFrensen said that after hearing about the fellow litter picker, she jumped in her car immediately and drove to meet her.

Dianne Siegel remembers the day when LaFrensen pulled up too, relieved to have met someone who shared her penchant for cleaning up.

The two became fast friends.

Siegel’s trash route starts near her home on Red Bridge Road, since people often throw trash out of their cars and into her yard.

She’ll go out independently every couple of weeks, but the two usually go together at least once a week.

“Some people say it’s stuff that’s blown out of cans or garbage trucks, I don’t believe that,” LaFrensen said. “People are throwing stuff out of the cars and I say that because it’s stuff that can blow very easily. It’s a lot of people littering like crazy.”

LaFrensen and Siegel work on the highway entrance and exit ramps near Highway 71. They go together to try to keep each other safe, especially from oncoming traffic.

The other day, Siegel said she picked up 41 bottles in two hours of cleaning alongside Red Bridge Road.

The two friends sort out bottles and take them to Ripple Glass, where they are recycled.

‘Change how we think about litter’

Alicia Grindstaff loads up for the volunteer cleanups she coordinates near her home by Arrowhead Stadium: rakes, shovels, trash grabbers, bags, gloves, vests — and donuts for morale.

Despite being the home of Kansas City’s most prized teams, the freeways near the stadium attract litter and debris that doesn’t always get picked up unless volunteers like Grindstaff take it on, she said.

After seeing a lot of griping on Nextdoor, she started organizing people on social media to help pick up trash.

Since she first posted over a year ago, Grindstaff’s group “Kindness in KC” has over 660 members.

She and groups of like-minded neighbors comb through the grass lining the freeway, usually near the bridge over I-70 that crosses Sterling Avenue, about every six weeks.

“It’s surprising that you can have fun picking up trash,” Grindstaff said. “It’s pretty grody, but you’re with people talking and getting to meet other people. It really does help the time pass because you’re in it together.”

When picking up trash, Grindstaff said she has encountered anything from QuikTrip cups and beer cans to needles and clothing.

In some instances, Grindstaff said sewage leaks have also left behind human waste around the area that she said her team of neighborhood volunteers is not equipped to handle.

Ultimately, she said she wishes more people knew that their litter probably won’t decompose.

“It would change some of the way I think we see [litter] or the way we would deal with it,” Grindstaff said. “If we don’t get it picked up, it will end up in the waterways… ultimately we’ll ingest it at some point.”

Read more about how recycling really works in Kansas City.

Towers of tires

Eduard Beijen has seen a lot since he started picking up trash last year, but nothing surprised him like the stack of 36 tires sitting outside Kansas City Central Seventh Day Adventist Church.

It took him all morning to move them to the curb so the city could pick the tires up, and it took almost three weeks for the city to collect the tires.

What he sees around Longview Lake and Jerry Smith Prairie Park — his usual walking spots — doesn’t stack up to tires, but he wishes the city would do something about cleaning up.

Being an outdoor enthusiast, Beijen started picking up trash because it disappointed him to see litter in the parks and on the trails. The lack of care from residents walking along these paths inspired him to start picking up trash on his own.

He often sees beer cans, glass bottles and single-use styrofoam packaging. He picks up trash every time he goes out to walk, which is every day. He carries a small plastic bag with him and as he walks, he picks up whatever he sees.

“You can furnish a whole house with the stuff that’s being thrown away,” Beijen said. “It’s unbelievable.”

He thinks people leave trash outside in parks because of the limited amount of trash containers, but also thinks that some people just don’t care.

‘A Man in the Mirror moment’

When Robert Quarles goes out to pick up trash near Interstate 70 by E. 23rd Street, he doesn’t bring one of those litter grabber tools.

He brings a big plastic rake and a dustbin.

“There’s too much trash out there,” he said. “It’s just easier to use a rake.”

Quarles said the source of the trash around his neighborhood off the highway is varied: litter people throw out of their cars from the highway or driving through, bulky items or trash bags that people dump by the onramp or in vacant lots, stuff that people leave behind if they were evicted or garbage that accumulates if people are living outside.

Another major litter culprit according to Quarles? The wind.

If people put their trash bags out too early, vermin bite open the bags, and trash blows around. Trash blows out of contractors’ pickup trucks, causing construction debris and nails to scatter across streets. Really windy days revive debris that had been buried when state highway workers mowed over the trash from a previous year.

“When I would sit on my porch, I would see the trash blowing around,” Quarles said. He said he’d pick up litter before leaving for work, only to find more in his yard when he got home at the end of the day.

Read more about Kansas City’s new recycling carts.

He’d call MoDOT, and he’d call the city, but the problem seemed to persist.

Then about 10 years ago: “It was just a man in the mirror moment,” Quarles said.

“I kept on asking myself and getting frustrated, why doesn’t someone do something about this?” he said. “Well, I’m here and no one else is doing anything about it. I want something done about it, so I guess it’s left up to me.”

Picking up trash has given him a lot of insight into the city and the people who live here, he said.

“People want all this new construction happening downtown and for KC to be like all these other big cities, but they need to practice with the upkeep of it,” he said.

“I get a chance to see what people are spending their money on, Natural Light, Chipotle, Mcdonald’s.”

Quarles joked that based on what he’s observed, it’d be smart for him to invest in QuikTrip.

Over the years, Quarles said he hopes he’s set an example for his neighbors and for people passing through the busy area.

“It took a lot of years for people to recognize, but I think by seeing me do it, people ask themselves, why is it that they have to put up with trash in their neighborhoods? And they go back and start picking it up too,” Quarles said. “It may seem like it’s not your problem, but we all need to do something.”

The Star’s Kynala Phillips and Allison Dikanovic contributed reporting.

This story was originally published April 12, 2023 at 5:30 AM.