BETHLEHEM, Pa. — The snow is gone. What it left behind on Lehigh Valley roadsides isn’t. For Kathy Frederick, that moment is a call to action.
Frederick is the founder of LVCleanUp, a community volunteer initiative she launched in 2021 that has grown to roughly 100 volunteers and logged thousands of bags of trash removed from streets and roadsides across Allentown, Bethlehem, Whitehall and beyond.
“People trash roads and neighborhoods just as much in the winter as in summer,” Frederick said. “The difference in winter is that fewer people are out cleaning and if there’s snow, we’re waiting for the melt. Even if there’s no snow, it’s harder to pick up litter because it’s often frozen to the ground.”
Now that the ground has thawed, Frederick said she is planning a new round of group cleanups to tackle some of the valley’s most persistently littered corridors.
Same trash, different day — with a few exceptions
The type of trash that surfaces with the snow is largely the same year-round, Frederick said: beverage containers, food packaging, drink cups and plastic in seemingly endless variety.
“So. Much. Plastic,” she said.
But the list goes well beyond the expected. Frederick and her volunteers have hauled away car parts, clothing, diapers, paint and motor oil containers, mattresses, furniture, tires and flat-panel televisions.
Among the stranger finds over the years: the innards of an entire shuttle bus, a full set of luggage, an upright piano, LP records, a full-sized drum set, a cymbal and a liquefied turkey.
Her personal favorite keepsake: a 3.5-pound lion’s-head door knocker.
“Pretty much a snapshot of everyday life that ended up on the roadside instead of in a trash can or recycling,” she said.
Where the trash piles up
Frederick has catalogued the valley’s worst litter hot spots through years of firsthand cleanup work.
The areas she said consistently require the most attention include N. Bradford St. on Allentown’s east side near the Lehigh River, American Parkway east of Airport Road, E. Market St. in Bethlehem near the Minsi Trail Bridge, and River Drive on the Allentown side and Central Blvd. on the Bethlehem side.
Repeat cleanup locations also include stretches of Hanover Ave., E. Highland at Irving, Albert St. near the D&L trailhead, 6th St. in Whitehall near Jordan Park and several blocks along Sumner Ave. in Allentown.
One area has shown meaningful improvement. Frederick said she and volunteers spent nearly two years cleaning Center City Allentown every weekend before stepping back in fall 2024, when she noticed a significant reduction in curb and street trash.
“While I wish I knew the reason, I’m just happy that the city is remarkably cleaner, and I’m sure residents are too,” she said.
Volunteers make a fast difference
Frederick said the scale of impact possible with even a small group of volunteers is striking.
“A dozen volunteers can clean a half-mile to a mile of roadway in under two hours,” she said.
She often cleans solo, but posts calls for volunteers on LVCleanUp’s Instagram and Facebook pages when organizing group events.
The operation runs with support from donors and municipalities — the cities of Allentown and Bethlehem, townships and PennDOT have all supplied bags, gloves, safety vests, traffic cones and grabbers.
When a group cleanup is underway, the City of Allentown places road signs along the cleanup route and dispatches crews to haul away collected bags within 24 to 48 hours — whether that’s 10 bags from a solo outing or more than 200 from a large event.
“This really is a community effort, from volunteers to donors to the cities that haul the trash away,” Frederick said.
She said LVCleanUp has enough equipment on hand to outfit about 20 volunteers at a time and is not currently seeking donations of supplies.
How to help
For those who want to get involved without joining a formal cleanup group, Frederick said the most impactful thing residents can do is keep the area immediately around their home clean.
“I’ve always said that if everyone just cleaned the area right around where they live, it would make an enormous difference,” she said. “If people keep their own blocks clean, then our volunteer groups can focus on the bigger problem areas like major roadways and non-residential streets that attract a lot of litter.”
Frederick acknowledged she has been out less frequently this past fall and winter but said group cleanups are coming soon.
Anyone interested in joining can follow LVCleanUp on Instagram or Facebook for event announcements.
Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful, a statewide nonprofit focused on litter cleanup and community improvement, recognized Frederick as one of its Volunteers of the Year for 2023 — the only Lehigh Valley resident among fewer than 10 honorees statewide.
