Annual Citywide Home Cleanup Day to he be held for NMB residents this Saturday

By Ruben Lowman

Any North Myrtle Beach resident with unwanted items laying around the house might want to get up and out a little earlier than usual this Saturday.  

The city will be hosting its annual Citywide Home Cleanup Day this Saturday, Nov. 6, from 9 a.m. until 12 noon for residents only. 

“The citywide cleanup has been going on for about 20 years. It has changed over the years but the format we have now seems to work for what we are doing,” said Gregg Barnhill of The Keep North Myrtle Beach Beautiful (KNMBB) Committee. “We added document shredding a few years ago and that is very popular. We usually get several tons of discarded items such as TV’s, old computers and electronics, lawn mowers and many other items. We also get a lot of paint and paint products.”

The cleanup event is sponsored by the KNMBB Committee, the North Myrtle Beach Sanitation Division and the city of North Myrtle Beach. It provides city residents with an annual opportunity to get rid of some of the unwanted items they may have cluttering up their houses, closets, attics, garages, storage sheds and yards. Household items such as Barnhill described can disposed of, also including old appliances, furniture, pesticides, chemicals, oil and old tires. Some items, such as medical waste and construction debris, will not be accepted. 

The cleanup event will take place at the NMB Sanitation Transfer Station located at 1220 Second Avenue South, and all items must be transported to the station by residents to be disposed of. 

The event will feature a Shred 360 for document shredding that Barnhill said residents can take advantage of. The city will provide free document shredding, with participants limited to a maximum of three bags or boxes of documents.     

The KNMBB Committee is the local affiliate of the larger Keeper America Beautiful organization. They offer the community of a volunteer program composed of area residents who help to educate and empower the city’s residents to make improvements to the local environment, which improves the quality of life and community pride of the city. Some of the ways they do that is through beautification, litter prevention and recycling.

Typically, the KNMBB organization has many scheduled events throughout the year that contribute to cleaning up many parts of the city, Barnhill said. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the events have been cancelled since it first emerged, however.  

“KNMBB has just started to get back involved with cleanups and other events this fall. Most of our 2020 and first half of 2021 events were canceled,” Barnhill said.  

The organization has begun to hold some of the events they usually have as part of their annual schedule recently. In September, they sponsored the city’s 31st Annual Beach Sweep/Creek Sweep that cleaned up the oceanfront areas of North Myrtle Beach and some areas of the marsh in Cherry Grove. 

Barnhill explained that these sort of cleanup days are often the result of the collective work by many volunteers and organizations.

“Some of the cleanups are organized by different groups in town. KNMBB supports these groups by providing supplies and additional volunteers. Some of the groups that do cleanups each year are Grand Strand Professionals, Capt. Smiley’s Fishing Charters, North Myrtle Beach High School’s Science Club and Beta Club, and other groups and HOAs in NMB,” Barnhill said.

The city itself has some other year-round options for disposing of unwanted household items that are not regularly scheduled but are provided on an as-needed basis, such as a special collections service for furniture, appliances and other bulky items. The city asks that they be placed at the curbside for pickup and to ensure prompt service, residents should call the Sanitation Division at (843) 280-5500 prior to placing the items.  

Residents can also consider donating the items to the Salvation Army, Goodwill or local churches first, with many of these organizations offering pickups for donated items. 

For the events sponsored by KNMBB, Barnhill said that they advertise through local media and social media to let people know it is happening. They get volunteers to help with these events through the organization’s members and through students at the high school. 

“For events like the beach sweep and other cleanups we advertise for volunteers. Some of the events have set days,” Barnhill said. “The beach sweep/river sweep is a state wide event and it is always the 3rd Saturday in September. “

Barnhill said the organization doesn’t have any other events scheduled for the rest of the year because of the holidays and other holiday events. He said they usually start back in late February with their events and then they go through the spring.

“If anyone wants to help they can contact us and we can add them to our mailing list for future events,” Barnhill said.