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January 21, 2007
On the road’s side
Lincoln man a litter-removing dynamo on W.Va. 214
ALUM CREEK — When Howland Sharpe talks trash, people tend to listen.
Since joining the state’s Adopt-A-Highway program in 1993, Sharpe has removed
more than 14,000 pounds of litter from the two-mile stretch of W.Va. 214 he
clears of litter, sometimes several times a week.
“I just hate seeing a place look like a damn dump,” he said, as he toted a
blaze orange litter bag along a section of the highway near Midland Elementary
School, filling the bag with discarded fast-food cups, beer cans, plastic soda
bottles and cigarette butts.
But Sharpe’s work doesn’t end once his two miles of roadside trash is bagged.
After removing litter from the highway shoulder, the Lincoln County man sorts
out aluminum cans, glass bottles and plastic containers for recycling, reducing
the amount of waste destined for the landfill by half.
He also keeps meticulous records of the trash he picks up and processes.
“The people who are opposing the bottle bill are saying that [beverage]
containers only account for about 5 percent of the waste stream,” Sharpe said.
“But I weigh what I pick up and along this road, it’s more like 50 percent.”
From Sharpe’s two-mile Adopt-A-Highway segment, which stretches from the
Chuck Yeager Monument near the highway’s intersection with Corridor G into Alum
Creek, beverage containers collected during a four-year period accounted for an
average 49.25 percent of all roadside waste.
“You just don’t see bottles and cans along the road in states where they have
container laws,” said Sharpe, who has spoken in favor of a West Virginia bottle
bill in legislative hearings. “And it’s wasteful not to recycle these materials.
We can’t keep on digging stuff out of the ground to make these containers, then
burying it in landfills, forever.”
In addition to clearing rubbish from his own Adopt-A-Highway segment, he
helps the Alum Creek Lions Club clean up their adjacent two-mile stretch.
He also makes regular recycling runs to process recyclable waste from three
rural post offices, a barbershop and a library in the Alum Creek area, and with
his wife, Doris, gives presentations on anti-littering to area schoolchildren.
A native of Miami, Sharpe worked as a truck fleet mechanic in Florida and
Georgia before moving to his wife’s native state of West Virginia in 1993 while
in his mid-50s.
After working at Moore’s Lumber and Lowe’s he is now retired, although his
anti-litter campaign sometimes resembles a full-time vocation.
“Once I get on something I think is worth doing, I’m really on it,” he said.
He can be found wielding his orange pickup stick along the shoulders of W.Va.
214 come rain or shine, but he will sit out days in which temperatures fail to
rise above freezing.
“When it’s frozen, the leaves stick to everything and it’s just not worth
spending the time to try to keep up,” he said.
While most of the roadside debris he encounters is a predictable blend of
beverage containers, fast-food wrappers and cigarette butts, there are
occasional gems.
“You’d be surprised at how many tools you can find along this stretch of
road,” he said. “And I found a 10-dollar bill once. But usually the only reward
is good exercise and fresh air and having the road look nice. It gets me out,
and I like it, but it’s kind of habit-forming. I can’t walk anywhere now without
picking up stuff.”
Alum Creek residents who don’t know him by name know him by sight as “The
Litter Man.”
“If they want to call me that, I don’t care,” he said. “It’s an honest name.”
Sharpe was named the state Adopt-A-Highway program’s volunteer of the year
last year and was also recognized for his efforts by the Lincoln County
Commission.
He said that while his section of W.Va. 214 continues to produce a steady
stream of trash, the road looks noticeably better than it did when he began
picking up litter nine years ago.
“I think the attitude about littering is changing for the better, but it’s a
slow process,” Sharpe said. “But if someone does just a little bit to help, it’s
contagious.”
To contact staff writer Rick Steelhammer, use e-mail or call 348-5169.
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