The City of Troy’s Anti-Litter Committee met Thursday and called for a “rally around the trash can.”

The committee seeks to find ways to reduce and, hopefully, one day eliminate the litter problem in the city.

The District 3 cleanup is scheduled for 9 a.m. on Aug. 31. Litter-getters are to meet at the Troy City Board of Education building on Highway 167.

Meredith McLendon, committee chair, said that cleanup days planned for Districts 1 and 2 were not well attended.

“We had advertised the cleanups well but only a few people showed up,” she said. “We have to find ways to get people involved.”

The committee tossed around several ideas of ways to involve the community, including enlisting the help of high school students and Troy University fraternities and sororities.

Dee Bennett suggested that, since all facets of today’s society seems to be “all about competition,” the cleanups could be turned into some type of competition.

“That’s just my wheels turning,” Bennett said of the idea, “but I think it could work.”

Janet Motes agreed with Bennett and suggested that a trophy could be presented monthly to the district that had the greatest cleanup day participation or collected the most trash.

“The trophy could be presented to the council member from the winning district at the city council’s last meeting of the month,” Motes said. “The council member could keep the trophy for a whole month until the next presentation.”

The committee discussed the pros and cons of the way that the competition could be judged and the consensus of the committee was that the cleanup day should be the same for all districts in order to accommodate the trash pickup.

The idea will be presented to the city council members for their consideration and their input.

John “Doc” Anderson said that, for that idea or any idea to work, the city council members should show up at the cleanup days and lead.

“The council members are on the payroll and they need to be at the cleanups and lead from the front,” Anderson said. “This is about pride. We should all take great personal pride in our community. I’m tired of giving out happy meals for everything. We should do what we do out of pride.”

Raymond Sexton said that the ultimate goal of the Anti-Litter program is to get litter off the streets and clean up the community.

“It’s up to all of us,” he said.