Carcasses, recliners and butts all part of a bustling annual Juneau spring cleaning

Randy Hurtte says he’s been passing out trash bags for Litter Free Inc.’s annual community cleanup ever since it started 30 or so years ago, so he’s also alert about where to do trash pickups himself after all the bags have been handed out.

“It’s always fun to see everything that’s flying out of the back of cars and stuff, and make (pickups), and I’ve got a couple homeless areas that have been pretty littered-bugged up,” he said in-between passing out bags to volunteers Saturday morning in front of Western Auto Marine.

Hurtte said there were about 25 people from Juneau Rotary’s downtown club waiting at the Lemon Creek store when he arrived to start handing out bags at 8 a.m. Hundreds of other people working in organized groups, families, pairs and individuals also took part in the pickups that last year saw 22,140 pounds of waste delivered to the landfill and 120 pounds of recyclables collected.

Picking up bags from him at about 10 a.m. were James McFerran, his daughter, Harper, 11, and son, Calvin, 9. The family said they were planning to spend the morning picking up trash in the vicinity of Harborview Elementary School, which the youths attend.

“I’ve seen a lot of wrappers and stuff on the playground flying around, and just a lot of gunk in all the rocks and grass,” Harper McFerran said.

James McFerran said this is his first year participating in the Litter Free cleanup, which he saw advertised on Facebook, although he has done other trash pickups on his own in town.

The Litter Free event has remained largely the same over three decades, although it’s easier to spread the word now via online means such as social media, Hurtte said. Also, people are now wise about limiting roadside trash bag dropoffs to what’s collected in public areas that are a designated part of the cleanup, whereas during the initial years some people used the day to clear out their household junk.

The amount of trash collected tends to vary, he said.

“It seems like it depends on the snow sometimes — if we have a very snowy year you end up with more stuff on the side of the road as the snow melts down, but the volume just seemed like it varies,” Hurtte said.

Items collected and left by roadsides for pickup — not all of which can fit or safely be put in bags — also can vary widely. Tina Martin, who said she’s been participating in cleanups for a couple of decades, said she and her daughter came across plenty of items large and small while trekking along Back Loop Road near their home.

“We found a whole chair that was dumped down here, like a La-Z-Boy recliner,” she said.

Her daughter, Isabelle Martin, 17, made a more macabre discovery.

“This time we found a whole moose or bear carcass,” she said. “They like skinned it, or whatever, probably took some of the marrow out because they’re all hollow and the bones are all cut, and they just kind of threw it over their fence.”

Many participants said they were planning to continue their trash collection until noon when a lunch gathering with a giveaway of two bikes was taking place at the Alaskan Brewing Company, although some other cleanup efforts around town continued during the afternoon. Those included a cleanup of the Mendenhall Wetlands area between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and a campus cleanup at the University of Alaska Southeast between 2 and 4 p.m.

The cleanup meant bags of trash and junk items were highly visible much of the day, but Casey Yakovich — who said he’s taken part in the cleanups the past few years because the event and his birthday coincide with Earth Day — said one benefit of the pickups and their visibility is creating a more favorable impression for tourists.

“While they’re driving along they see people picking up trash, but if they didn’t they’d see a lot more trash through their trip,” he said.

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.