On May 9, the North Platte High School Environmental Club participated in this year’s Downtown Community Cleanup. This is the second year that any youth organization has helped in this event.

NPHS students pulled every weed at the library flower patch, then traveled through the downtown streets, picking up litter. They also picked up garbage along the side of the railroad fence down Front St. and under viaducts. The club mostly found cigarette butts, bottle caps, broken glass bottles, and more. According to the LCC Tobacco Free website, about 4.3 trillion cigarette butts are littered globally every year. Smokers in the United States alone would account for over 250 billion cigarette butts.

“With the amount of people that throw their trash around, it’s important that we also have people that clean it up,” said sophomore Riley Smith, who participated in the event. “It matters because it shows people the right thing to do,” said senior Riley Dehr. “Cleanup’s not only reduce the amount of litter in our streets, but it [also] makes people think twice about littering again.” Dehr has been taking part of the clean up for two years and has been an active environmentalist. “Not a lot of people know how much trash is in the area. So, it’s important to clean it up and help our environment,” said junior Kevin Escobar Vasquez. “It went very well. It was nice seeing everyone there just helping out and beautifying our community,” said Dehr.

If you are a student that is interested in joining the Environmental Club to make the North Platte community a cleaner and better place, just ask a current member of the group how to get involved. “Volunteering with the club makes our town less trashy,” said sophomore Beyonce Reyna. You do not have to be a member to know that we need to take better care of our Earth. There are other ways to participate in your community such as recycling and picking up your trash.