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Brazos Valley's illegal dump sites have yielded some unusual finds over the years.
Last year, Keep Brazos Beautiful volunteers spotted an eight-track tape in a trash-filled creek bed, said Laura Tankersley, the agency's outgoing executive director.
"We've gotten everything in previous years, from six bottles of unopened chardonnay to false teeth," Tankersley said.
Each year, hundreds of volunteers remove tons of trash from local parks, roadways, railroad rights-of-way, highways, campuses and illegal dump sites as part of the Texas Trash-Off.
This year's event is set for April 5. After the morning cleanup, from 9 a.m. to noon, volunteers will return to the Brazos Center to compare their finds in a friendly competition for the Most Unusual Trash award and other prizes.
Last year's turnout of 350 volunteers is a sign of the event's success, said Tankersley, who expects a large crowd this year as well.
While volunteers are often surprised or amused at their finds, Tankersley said the awards are intended to get people to understand that littering is a problem.
"By drawing attention to what and how much we actually collect, a lot of the youth that come out and work with us are very influenced after they see the stuff that's out there on the ground," she said.
Bob Colwell, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation's local office, said cigarette butts are the No. 1 item pulled from local roads by state contractors and volunteers. TxDOT partners for the cleanup with Keep Texas Beautiful, of which Keep Brazos Beautiful is an affiliate.
Cigarette butts, boxes and chewing tobacco wrappers account for 33 percent of the trash pulled from Texas roads, Colwell said. Food packaging and non-alcoholic beverage containers together make up a little more than half of highway trash, he said.
The local TxDOT office pays contractors an average of $9,100 to pick up 7,300 cubic feet of trash per month, Colwell said. TxDOT delivers the refuse to the Rock Prairie Road landfill.
"That's about $100,000 a year we spend that could go to something else, just picking up trash," he said.
Even though the agency hires contract workers, volunteers still play a critical role, Colwell said. Last year, 43 local Adopt a Highway groups filled 1,260 bags with trash.
Tankersley said illegal dumping continues to be a problem in Brazos County, but the littering problem has improved somewhat.
Keep Brazos Beautiful conducts an annual litter index, driving through neighborhoods and scoring trash levels on a four-point system, Tankersley said.
"Each year, it improves, slowly but surely," she said.
While penalties for littering are stringent, Tankersley said, law enforcement is not what it could be.
"When police started the Click it or Ticket weekend for seat belts and started pulling people over, people got the idea," she said. "It would be great if they could do that for littering."
• Holli L. Estridge's e-mail address is holli.estridge@theeagle.com.
