LUZERNE COUNTY, Pa. — When Sal Polit-Moran drives around his community in Exeter Township, he's not always happy about what he sees, especially all the trash he sees dumped on the side of these winding, country roads.
"Why? Why would you do that? It's really not that expensive to take the stuff to a dump or hire a junk removal company or call us. We'll pick it up at a very fair rate; why dump stuff?" Polit-Moran asked.
Being the owner of Prestige Disposal puts him in the position to do something about it.
"We're driving around; we're trying to see with a couple people on Facebook that mentioned some hotspots of areas that have a lot of trash dumped, so we're just picking up some like bulk dump sites so people that dumped like couches, mattresses, stuff like that. We're going to try to pick that up and do the best we can," Polit-Moran said. "It's a lot of work, but we're going to try to get as much as we can to get."
Polit-Moran says he's never seen it this bad.
"It downgrades a whole area, and I really don't like seeing that," he said. "I think a lot of the illegal dumping has to do with the pandemic. There was a lot less enforcement, a lot less town cleanups, and this is the result of it."
He's hoping gestures like this every month or so help to keep his community clean.
"I think that if somebody sees trash on the side of the road and it sits there for a while, they might think it's OK for them to do it, and then all of a sudden you have a whole dump on the side of the road. So I'm hoping, in theory, that by cleaning up, it's going to help stop people from continuing to dump here."