RAPID CITY, SD — More than 1,000 volunteers – young people, seniors, business teams, service club groups, city department directors, elected officials – picked up trash from fence lines, ditches, roadsides, creek beds and gullies in late April. Homeowners cleaned out garages, attics and basements of items no longer needed or wanted.

When it was all tallied up, Rapid City residents picked up, bagged up, collected, hauled and delivered 970 tons of garbage to the Rapid City Landfill during the annual Cleanup Week April 20-25.

This April’s yield of discarded items and trash materials easily surpassed the nearly 850 tons of garbage during the 2025 Community Cleanup Week and the 895 tons collected from the 2024 community effort.

In terms of vehicles, a total of 2,694 vehicles dropped off garbage during this year’s cleanup activities, compared to 2,315 in 2025. Including residential, yard waste and commercial traffic, a total of nearly 4,000 (3,971) vehicles passed through the Landfill scales in just one week.

A total of 80 volunteer teams, averaging 12-15 people, participated in this year’s cleanup activities April 20-24 with Community Cleanup Day on April 25. Some teams cleaned three to four areas. Of the tonnage collected, nearly five tons of waste was picked up by the volunteer teams.

“It was simply a spectacular effort by everyone,” said Rapid City Solid Waste Outreach Coordinator Ria Hannon. “Once again, teams were committed to the effort. They look forward to this week of cleanup each year. And the number of people hauling trash materials and items to the Landfill was definitely impressive.

“The community, from fence lines and ditches to home and garages, looks so much better.” Hannon said community cleanup efforts are not just dedicated to one week of each year.

“We can commit ourselves to cleaning up our community throughout the year, one fence line, one volunteer team effort at a time,” Hannon said. “We can dedicate ourselves to picking up litter, taking a bag with us on an evening walk or working with colleagues once a month to cleaning up a specific area.”

For more information on what items can be dropped off at the Rapid City Landfill, visit www.rapidcityrecycles.org.