LUCAS COUNTY, Ohio —
The Toledo Litter League is an organization run through Keep Toledo/Lucas County Beautiful and is made up of teams of non-profit organizations, corporations and everyday people who want to clean up their neighborhoods.
Their season wrapped up with an outing at the Mud Hens game on Sept. 23, celebrating the win of filling 3,807 bags of litter.
There were 37 teams in this year's Toledo Litter League and the teams would host clean-up events on their own time.
One person from Oregon known as the "Litter Critter" single-handedly collected 107 bags of litter throughout the summer.
Keep Toledo/Lucas County Beautiful supplies each of the teams with the supplies needed to clean the streets and the city assists with the bag removal once the collection is complete.
Next year's Litter League registration will begin in April around Earth Day, but there are plenty of ways to continue cleaning up the city before then.
Executive Director of Keep Toledo/Lucas County Beautiful Adam Cassi said anyone can host a cleanup event at any time and can find more information on how to arrange that on the group's website.
"There's research out there that says once an area is clean and it looks like it, the community takes pride in that area, people are less likely to litter there," Cassi said. "That's really the end goal is kind of to make that culture shift and show that it's not acceptable to litter in Lucas County or Toledo."
There will also be several specialty recycling events starting in November.
After Halloween, candy wrapper collection bins will be located in YMCAs around Lucas County due to candy wrappers being not accepted in standard recycling bins.
Pumpkins will be collected at compost bins placed throughout Lucas County through December.
Last year, Keep Toledo/Lucas County Beautiful collected about 20,000 pounds of pumpkins to be composted.
After election day, the organization will collect campaign signs to make sure they are recycled properly.
Its calendar continues to grow with new events added to keep the city clean.