Volunteers with CoveUNITY help clean up Business 90

By PAMELA GRANT

Cove Leader-Press

A few dedicated volunteers worked hard Sunday morning to help do their part to clean up along Business 190 in the area across the street from Walmart.

Volunteers met around 8 a.m. in the parking lot of Lone Star Pediatric Dental and worked their way up from there. Volunteers worked for about three hours and collected several bags of trash. Keep Copperas Cove Beautiful let them use safety vests, trash pickers, trash bags, and other supplies to help them complete their task.

Local resident Oz Gant organized the event on Facebook using her relatively new tag, #CoveUNITY. 

She is working to organize a group of volunteers for a variety of projects, all intended to promote unity and acts of kindness. Her main goal is to spread positivity.

“It’s just being a good neighbor…There’s no limit to what you can do to help,” said Gant. “I encourage anyone and everyone to just change their way of thinking and have a positive mindset.”

Gant said that with the pandemic, Labor Day looked a lot different this year, and she thought that doing the cleanup was a good way to honor the day while doing something to help the community. She said that it is important to her to not litter and to respect both nature and the environment.

“We really like doing stuff like this,” said Jolene Lopez who attended the cleanup with her daughter Savannah Lopez (12). She said that she has started cleanups of her own in the past. “It’s just offering a few minutes of time to beautify your neighborhood or your city.”

She said that participating in cleanup events is great for teaching her daughter about the importance of doing something good for others without expecting any sort of reward.

Lopez added that the stretch of highway that they cleaned is one of the first things that people see when they come into Copperas Cove, and it’s just not appealing when it’s surrounded by trash.

“We’re just doing it for the community…This is where we live. This is where we work,” said Christina Valentine who also helped clean up on Sunday. “Copperas Cove is a small community, so if we don’t do it, who will?”

Those interested in helping with future projects can find the group at #CoveUNITY online.