Community of Columbus bans together to clean the city

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) -The Friendly City is working together to become a clean city.

This weekend the community of Columbus started the ‘Pick it up, possum town’ project

The project originated from Mayor Keith Gaskin.

While this is just day one of the clean-up efforts. Each person I talked to says they feel it will make a difference.

In the friendly city, the community got the opportunity to come together and make a change.

By cleaning the city they love.

Residents and even volunteers got their hands dirty even elected officials.

Each of Columbus’s city council members took to the streets

Ethel Stewart, Councilman of Ward one, says doing this will make the roads look a little different.

“If you drive throughout Columbus you will see a lot of trash on the side of the street and roads so we have volunteers that have teamed up with us today so that we can pick up trash and as you drive you won’t see the paper on the side of the road,” said Stewart.

Stewart says she hopes that when folks see a cleaner city. They’ll want to keep the streets clean themselves.

“Columbus is a friendly city and it also needs to be a clean city so hopefully by doing education we can help citizens understand to carry a bag in your car and you can put trash in and when you eat your items do not throw trash in the streets and its importance,” said Stewart.

Mayor Keith Gaskin started this project to inspire Columbus citizens.

“This is something that we want to be driven by the citizens of Columbus but we also want to do more than just cleaning up the city like this periodically and we want to change the mindset of the people and where they can take the trash and where they shouldn’t leave it and also how it affects the environment,” said Gaskin.

Keeping the city clean is just part of the project.

Gaskin says working together outside of the office will make Community members closer.

“I think it’s important that we have events like this in each of the wards because it builds a sense of community and it also gives the citizens a chance to interact with the council members while they’re picking up trash they can talk about the concerns they have in the city so it just brings a sense of community around something that’s important and that’s having a clean and healthy city,” said Gaskin.

Bringing the community closer and making Columbus a beautiful place to live is the Goal

If you want to find out more about this project you can follow the ‘Pick It Up Possum Town’ Facebook page for more.