ALPAR Youth Litter Patrol help clean up Bethel

by Paxton Alexie and Lacey Samuelson

Our ALPAR Program is now over with and are waiting for our prizes to arrive so we can hold a celebration for their hard work. Unfortunately, we were not successful in having the community Neighborhood Summer Greenup Cleanup Contest. Nobody really participated in the initiative, so our plans are to hold a small gathering with the ALPAR YLP Participants and their families along with ONC. We will also invite the youth recycling contestants in honor of their participation with our recycling program. We hope to gain more involvement from the community next year.

Things to look forward to with our Recycling Program are: 

We encourage youth of all age groups to participate in our recycling program. Each month we will hold a door prize. One ticket will be drawn each month and whoever wins will receive the door prize. To participate, people will need only to call Mary Matthias at 907-543-0516 when bags of recyclables are ready for pick-up. We will have tickets for participants to fill out. We do not allow anyone to drop off their recyclables at or near the ONC office building. Please follow the directions: Do not place any trash or other unknown items into the collection of recyclables. We recycle Aluminum Soda/Beer/energy drink cans. We encourage folks to use our ALPAR Recycling Bags which we will hand deliver while picking up recycled collections scheduled every Friday afternoon. Thank you.

-Mary Matthias, Environmental Program Coordinator Orutsararmiut Native Council Natural Resources Dept.

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ALPAR YLP News Letter

by Paxton Alexie

Hello, my name is Paxton Alexie. I am from Bethel, AK. My parents are Natalie & Alton Alexie. I’m going to be a freshman at BRHS. I worked for ONC with the ALPAR Litter Patrol Team.

The ALPAR Youth Program is a ton of hard work. We do things like pick up litter, pick up/process and put collected recyclables in bags so we can ship them off to Anchorage. We were able to practice compiling research on how to create recycled crafts, plastic prevention and more. The main focus was working on sharing outreach and education with the community.

It gets frustrating when we find areas of Bethel that we have cleaned, all full of litter again. We get disappointed when we put in all that time and work just so it ends up the same a week later. To help with this problem, we encourage the community to contact the City of Bethel to place more trash bins around Bethel to help keep it cleaner. Some suggestions would be placing trash bins near the walkways between the YK Tundra Center and the BNC and near Watson’s intersection.

With the help of the Science & Culture Camp members, we were able to get tons of bags of litter and recyclables and make the sides of the roads much cleaner. We collected 52 bags of litter and recyclables with the help of them in just two hours.

The total amount of litter bags we collected was 190, but, the total amount of recyclables we collected was 145 bags. We only had THREE people join the ALPAR Youth Program including me, so we really can have more people join the program the next time.

We also have recycling competitions for kids every month, where they can win prizes for getting the most recyclables turned in. We only had 4 kids participate this month and it will be awesome if more joined in. If anyone wants to find out how they can join, please call Mary Matthias at 907-543-0516.

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Cleaning up Around The Community of Bethel

Hello, my name is Lacey Samuelson with the ALPAR youth litter patrol, where our vision is to help inspire and keep the Bethel community clean.

About a few weeks ago, the ALPAR group went to clean up litter by the library and worked our way down to Watson’s corner. While cleaning litter and picking up recyclables, our group found a lot of alcohol bottles scattered above and around Watson’s Corner and also found more along the sea wall below the Lion’s Club on down to the Joe Lomack Beach. And we also found an insulin syringe with a needle on it hidden in the bushes near the second staircase that was between 1st Avenue and the seawall. We flagged the area and our program supervisor safely contained it.

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-Mary speaks to this section on syringe found –

I am glad that safety procedures were followed by the ALPAR YLP. We had teamed up with the Bethel Lifesaver’s team that day. It was a shock for us to find something like that. I was able to safely confiscate the syringe, which had an orange cap over the needle. Next to it laid a brand new hot pink headband. We believe it was used with the syringe for drug use. We found them laying together right next to a small group of bushes where children could easily play next to if they wanted, but they were playing right above where we were. We strongly advise parents to keep a close watch on their children while walking/playing near the Lion’s Park on through 1st Avenue on down to the Joe Lomack beach. I was able to bring it over to the Bethel Landfill and meet with the Landfill Operator to see how to safely dispose of medical waste and placed it into a private dumpster.

As for the Alcohol bottles found, I asked Lacey how she felt about seeing them laying around, scattered among other litter. Her response was, “It’s normal because she’s always seen them while growing up.” In return, my response was that this should not be considered a “normal” thing for children to see while growing up.

Alcohol takes a lot of things away from families, most of all it robs children of all ages when it’s used recklessly. When we see intoxicated people walking about or laying down passed out on the ground/staircase/bushes, we can’t help but wonder why they choose to be in that state of living in carelessness and drunkenness. Is that normal? No, it’s a sickness followed by depression that leaves a trail of a repeated cycle of neglect to oneself and others.

It would be great if people could throw away their liquor bottles and litter away in a trash can. Please don’t throw them on the ground. Let’s help keep a healthier environment for all to live in.

Our ALPAR team would like to suggest putting more trash bins around our community here in Bethel. There is a need for more trash bins down near the seawall and along the sidewalk between the YK Tundra Center and BNC. We found a lot of trash, most recyclables such as soda cans, plastic beverage bottles and plastic bags. Since a lot of people walk to and away from the AC Value store it would be great to install more trash bins in these areas to help reduce the litter.

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Sincerely,

Lacey Samuelson and Paxton Alexie

ONC ALPAR Youth Litter Patrols