Good samaritan picks up trash twice a day

EARTH DAY

by Emma DiMaggio

Communications Manager

Twice a day, everyday, Mutual 5 resident Andrea Rutlege wanders the greenbelts of Leisure World with a trash picker and bag in hand. She’s on the hunt for crumpled Kleenex, cigarette butts and stray papers.

“About one and a half years ago, I saw a piece of paper in the bushes near Clubhouse 6,” Rutledge said. “It really irritated me.”

She decided to start carrying a bag with her whenever she went outside, just in case she saw something that needed picking up. That decision quickly turned into a twice-a-day walk—once after breakfast and once after lunch—to prowl for trash.

“It’s a good little job for me,” she said. “It keeps me busy, and it keeps me out of trouble, mostly.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that there are somewhere between 20 million and 1.8 billion pieces of plastic along the coastline of the United States.