Chronicle: Dirty Kansas City - KMBC Kansas City

Chronicle: Kansas City's trash problem, and what we need to solve it

Chronicle: Dirty Kansas City

Trash on our streets, and where it should ultimately go, is a problem we all must solve to clean up a dirty Kansas City.

Tens of thousands of drivers see it every day: Trash along Kansas City highways and streets.

It's rotten. Dangerous. Even deadly.

For the past year, KMBC 9 has investigated the consequences of so much trash piled up around Kansas City.

That trash — destined for the landfill — has ended up on our highways, streets and back alleys. Some are taking action.

Even when that trash does make it to the dump, experts predict area landfills will soon be full. But creating a new one comes with its own set of concerns.

If we truly love our way of life, and what Kansas City is and can be, why are some areas of our city so dirty?

Trash on our streets, and where it should ultimately go, is a problem we all must solve to clean up a dirty Kansas City.

[ CLICK HERE: Resources and how to help clean up Kansas City]

On this edition of Chronicle, we explore the controversial solutions over where our trash and recycling should go for years to come.

We're also getting results in a KMBC 9 Investigation. Our reporting over the past year has led to less trash on the side of Kansas City highways. It forced safety updates for trash haulers and tougher law enforcement for drivers with unsecured loads.

Kansas City is a city with momentum. So many great things are happening here.

But, with so much going on, there is a lot of room for making Kansas City look better.

We're about to introduce you to a few women who have made it their mission to do just that.

"I walk this block every day: Rain, sleet, shine or snow-- A clean neighborhood is a safe neighborhood; I've said that for years."

Kansas City needs more Minnie Mitchem.

"No trash never stays on this street," Mitchem said on a day she met us in her neighborhood. "I don't sleep well when trash is on the street."

"Miss Minnie" is a 72-year-old retired government worker. She's walked the block near Gregory Avenue and Agnes Avenue for 45 years.

"When I come out here in the evening time, I come all the way out to Gregory. I make sure all the trash is gone, because shouldn't be no trash around here. Today was trash day."

Her route begins at exactly 4 p.m. every afternoon, picking up any trash she sees.

If people don't mow their yard, Miss Minnie does it for them.

"It means a lot to this block to look mowed, trash off the street. It just looks safe and clean," she said, showing a lot she'd had mowed the day before. Mitchem says the grass had been high for a month or longer.

If people leave trash bags in front of abandoned houses, she picks them up and rolls them away.

"Sometimes when I get back to the driveway, the stuff that I tackle, ugh. It takes me a while to get my appetite back," she said.

If she can't pick it up, she'll report it to city workers, "Because it will not stay here."

Minnie Mitchem is just one woman on one block of Kansas City, inspiring others to clean up their city.

But, Mitchem says city leaders can do more to keep homeowners accountable.

Marlon Thatcher has reported trash problems to the city as well.

"My questions is, would you want this next to your property?" Thatcher asked.

Her son lives about 10 minutes away from Miss Minnie, near 52nd Street and Indiana Avenue.

She's called 311, reporting trash dumped on three abandoned lots.

"This affects the whole city," she said. "This is where our taxes go up, because we've got to pay extra for someone else to clean this up," Thatcher said.

Thatcher says she's called and left messages — but no one has returned those calls.

She says she wants city leaders to change policies to keep deadbeat and out-of-state landlords more accountable.

"If we start with fines, $300, $500, and they give you three days to cut, not no two weeks - not no 10 days. You know, you could get something done," she said. "Obviously, what they're doing is not working."

Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas agrees.

"We have got to do more enforcement on this issue," he said in a one-on-one interview.

Lucas said Kansas City Code Enforcement needs to write more tickets and fine more people for dumping trash.

Lucas says the city has struggled with unlicensed businesses taking money to haul trash away.

"And the way they do it at such a cheap price is because they just go drop it wherever the heck they want to," Lucas said.

As for the trash Thatcher reported near 52nd and Indiana, Lucas said, "It is unacceptable that people have to deal with that. And so, I apologize on behalf of the city for not being able to update that concern."

"We do more litter here in the Kansas City metropolitan area from the parks, from the streets, to the playgrounds," Thatcher said. "There's just no limit of how much litter you see and it shouldn't be."

Thatcher is calling all of us to attention. She wants you to see the negligence of people who dump trash illegally.

"That's past lazy," she said. "My grandmother used to say trifling. Real trifling."

She says she'll continue to report abandoned properties to the city. Meanwhile, Miss Minnie continues her afternoon walks.

She believes Kansas City needs a system of block captains — people who lead their neighbors to clean up extra trash they see every week.

"And if we had more block captains, I think people would be a little bit more responsible," she said. "In the blocks, in the neighborhoods, it would help."

"Kansas City should and could be beautiful. We have so much going on in our city," Marsha Ramsey said.

"I've started calling myself Lady Bird Ramsey."

Marsha Ramsey cares deeply about how we all view Kansas City.

"I just remember being a kid and Lady Bird Johnson beautifying Texas," she said. "And I always wanted to go to Texas to see what she did. And she did beautify it!"

Ramsey has started her own beautification and anti-littering campaign around Kansas City.

"I see a really messy city, and it saddens me," she said. "This should be picked up. There's no reason for any of this."

Ramsey says city and state leaders need to do better at making Kansas City look better.

"I mean, this is what people see when they come into our city. Trash. Nothing picked up."

Lucas said he knows the challenges of keeping Kansas City clean.

"I drive around the city a lot, and we have challenges with a few probably distinct areas," he said.

Lucas said money from Kansas City's marijuana sales tax is being used to fight trash across the city.

"One-third of that funding is going to efforts to combat illegal dumping, clearing dumping sites, making sure we're putting up more cameras and signage, doing all the work to ensure that this is not something that continues directly.

Taxpayers also fund a program called "Clean Up KC," where people experiencing homelessness can get paid to clean up the city.

One of those people is Jerome McGhee.

"People throw a lot of stuff out," he said.

We caught up with McGhee as he was picking up trash on a road on the south side of the Truman Sports Complex on a sweltering hot day.

"I be sweating up a storm," he said. "I be dripping wet, my shirt be all wet and stuff."

Still, McGhee and his crewmates from Hope Faith KC are out every day, filling up trash bags one at a time.

"These people want to get going, they want to get their paycheck," Hope Faith KC Executive Director Doug Langner said. "They want to do right for the city. They're moving their lives forward. They're inspiring to know and to meet."

Langner says the program has been a success.

It's funded with $300,000 from Kansas City, Missouri, taxpayers.

"So, a few of our team are going to return to a car tonight," he said. "Some of them are going to return to a shelter tonight, or staying like on a couch of a friend's tonight.

"So what we want to do is help — help move people's lives forward with houselessness. Employ them. And honestly, a big piece is also they want to give back to Kansas City."

Workers like McGhee have helped the group pick up nearly 450,000 pounds of trash since last August.

"Due to my situations and stuff, they gave me this job right here," he said.

The hope is to eventually transition McGhee and others into full-time jobs, all while making the city more beautiful.

While the work continues on city streets, highways may be some of the most visible areas to clean up.

City leaders and Missouri Department of Transportation officials have had tense conversations over the past year about who is responsible for cleaning up trash along highways.

Kansas City eventually sent out its own public works crews as trash piled up along the highways after the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Fortunately, I think MoDOT is putting more focus in it, but there is still trash in too many medians and too many areas of the city under state highways," Lucas said.

MoDOT has hired its own trash contractor to help. In 2022, that contractor picked up 73 tons of trash using 11,000 trash bags, and there's still work to do.

MoDOT has also funded a program to help clean up areas of downtown where the unhoused gather — often leaving trash and debris behind.

Some of that trash ends up in places it shouldn't be, sometimes even catching fire.

In January 2022, a fire underneath an Interstate 70 bridge killed a homeless woman and destroyed part of the bridge itself.

That woman had been living under the bridge.

MoDOT wants to prevent incidents like that from happening again.

Marsha Ramsey still points to the need to do better.

"We should do better," she said.

If we do better cleaning up trash, where should it go? Especially if our metro's landfills are scheduled to close within the next two decades.

That's at the heart of a debate taking place from South Kansas City, to Jefferson City, to Pettis County.

In the United States, we make nearly 300 million tons of waste every year. About half of that goes straight to the landfill.

We each produce between five and seven pounds of trash or recycling every day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Once it's picked up on the curb, do you ever think about where it actually goes?

Garbage trucks most often take trash from our homes directly to the landfill. But, sometimes, they go to waste transfer stations to cut down on fuel and distance.

Waste transfer stations repack that trash onto semitrailers, and then they take it to the dump.

Those semitrailers were part of the investigation we told you about earlier — trucks spilling trash onto highways.

That investigation has been credited with less trash and tougher enforcement on Kansas City's roads.

Recycling is trucked to transfer stations, too. Or onto another facility. But you can't recycle everything.

Right now, the immediate Kansas City region has two main landfills accepting household trash: Courtney Ridge in Sugar Creek, and the Johnson County Landfill in Shawnee.

State leaders say the Sugar Creek landfill could be full in the next seven years. The company operating it says that number is closer to 20 years.

Surveys show the Johnson County landfill has roughly 20 years of capacity left.

Some of Kansas City's trash is trucked to just past Lawrence or to Sedalia.

Talks are underway in Sedalia for a new landfill.

Developers want to bring a new landfill to Kansas City, but opinions are fierce over where it should go.

They've targeted a 580-acre tract along 150 Highway in south Kansas City for a new landfill site.

But, neighbors aren't happy about it.

McKenzie Clark-Thomas has been speaking up about the proposed site for months.

"I feel like all of our concerns, all of our city's concerns, fall on deaf ears," she said.

She lives in a neighborhood south of the proposed Kansas City landfill.

Thousands of people in the area, like Clark-Thomas, invested in their dream homes, only to now face a harsh reality.

Clark-Thomas and her daughter Macie testified in Jefferson City against the landfill, with Macie telling lawmakers, "I don't want my family to get sick."

The family says the peace and health of their Raymore, Missouri, neighborhood would be gone if a landfill is built nearby.

"It's terrifying to think that this landfill that they're going to run in our backyard is going to be here," Clark-Thomas said.

Developer Jenny Monheiser also testified in front of state lawmakers, saying Kansas City is running out of landfill space, and needs a new location.

"My heart is not to hurt anybody," Monheiser said in her testimony. "My heart is always to help people, which is why we are proposing the solution for the region."

Monheiser and her team successfully lobbied lawmakers to block legislation that would have stopped the landfill from going in south Kansas City, right where she wants it.

Monheiser said she and her family are "millions of dollars into this investment" and have absolutely been working on the site for a while.

For months, neighbors, city, and state leaders have tried to ask Monheiser questions. They've held community meetings. They've protested. We've tried to reach her, too, asking her questions as she walked out of the Capitol building in April. We made multiple requests for an on-camera interview.

Monheiser finally talked to KMBC in September.

We asked, "Has there been any point in this project where you've said, 'I just need to stop. I can't go any further because of what I'm hearing from the people who live around this land?'"

"Um, no. Not that I need to stop," she said. "I feel like I need to gather those facts, and gather that information, and let them know what we're doing and why we're doing it."

Monheiser's team is still studying the land and is hoping to close on all the acreage there by this fall.

She says the landfill will not drive down property values, or negatively affect schools in the area. She says there would be no risk to water or air nearby.

But, neighbors like Sarah Thompson strongly disagree.

"Nobody's saying don't build a landfill," Thompson said. "But, what we're saying is, not right here."

Thompson has led the fight against the south Kansas City landfill.

Rick Meyers has, too.

"I built this home in 1994."

Myers says the proposed site is too close.

"Why here is my big question," he said.

Raymore Mayor Kris Turnbow is also fighting against building a landfill close to his city. Leaders in Lee's Summit, Peculiar, Pleasant Hill, Lake Winnebago, Belton, and Grandview have all come out against it, too. Joining them are several area counties, Missouri U.S. Representatives, and local school districts.

After Missouri lawmakers failed to pass a bill that would have stopped the landfill for good, the community is regrouping.

Thompson and her neighbors are now pitching in any extra savings to fund a political action committee.

They're planning for a stronger fight in Jefferson City. They're also planning to show lawmakers the KMBC 9 investigation that uncovered those semis spilling trash onto the road.

Our investigation found several of those trucks started their trips at a waste transfer facility owned by Jenny Monheiser.

We asked, "Were you disappointed when you saw that trash coming from the back of your contractor's trucks?"

"Yeah, like I said before, we desire to help the community, and help people, and that obviously isn't helping," Monheiser said.

She said her crews do clean up in the district around their business. She also said her contractor made changes to their tarps, closing space where debris could slip out.

Neighbors still question if landfill developers are doing what's best for the community.

They've proposed using those same semi-trucks, coming from waste transfer stations, to haul trash away from Kansas City.

Enter another developer who wants his proposed landfill to serve as a potential solution for Kansas City — an hour and a half away.

But the people there don't want it, either.

Right now, it's harvest season in Pettis County, Missouri.

David Gerken has a lot of time to think in the farm fields near La Monte where he's worked for decades.

He's concerned with what might be destroyed if a landfill goes in just down the road.

"I think about it every day," he said. "Maybe a few days something comes up and it'll get off your mind.

"It's total quiet and peaceful out here most of the time. And you know what a landfill's going to do. They're dumping trash in here every day. They've got excavators running," Gerken said.

Gerken owns a farm north of a proposed new landfill site in Pettis County.

It's less than 10 miles northwest of the current landfill in Sedalia, which the Missouri Department of Natural Resources says will fill up in the next 10 years.

Gerken has seen that landfill grow tall. He's documented two fires there. He doesn't want any of those issues near his home.

"There was like hundreds of buzzards flying up over that fire," he said. "I guess they was down there and the smoke was getting them, so they was wanting out here, too."

Developer Derrick Standley wants to permit the new landfill, just south of Gerken's farm.

"It will be years before he ever even sees the site," Standley said of Gerken's concerns. "No traffic will ever go by his house."

Standley says the new landfill would take waste from central Missouri, as well as a portion of the Kansas City area. He says the landfill site is remote and out of the way, below where anyone could see it from 50 highway.

Gerken expressed concern over the potential odor from the site.

"No," Standley said. "It's not going to have to worry about odor. That's not a realistic concern from the remoteness of this facility."

He's quick to point out how a landfill is the last defense for the environment to ensure clean drinking water by cutting down on litter.

And as for any fires, Standley says, "That is an occurrence that occurs on whether it be a transfer station, whether it be a disposal facility, or whether it be a Walmart or Target, we have iron lithium batteries that can become unpredictable."

Standley says landfill managers are trained to deal with those fires.

He's also trying to defend his right to build the facility in court after Pettis County, last year, passed an ordinance to restrict future landfill development.

Residents have formed a group called Pettis County First, opposing the new landfill.

Some residents believe multi-million dollar trash companies have targeted Pettis County to bring trash from hundreds of miles away.

"And I think that because the county is not zoned, that they see an ample or a quick opportunity to go ahead and bring the trash into Pettis County," resident Mark Edwards said.

Resident Steve Cannon says he'd feel more comfortable if it was just trash from Pettis County.

"If we don't have to collect it from 11 or 12 different counties, we're going to last a lot longer with our existing landfill, or even the creation of one if he had to, and let everybody take care of their own," he said.

At Pettis County's current Sedalia landfill, much of the trash is hauled from the Kansas City metro, an hour and a half away.

It arrives on semis just like the ones we documented spilling trash onto highways.

"Our highway is littered with trash from one side to the other," said Pettis County Presiding Commissioner Bill Taylor.

Taylor says 50 Highway has become a trash corridor. He wants Kansas City to take care of its own waste and not ship it to his county.

"We're afraid that when these large cities in these larger counties can push back because they're planning and zoning, they're going to shove all their trash out to rural counties," he said. "We don't want it either."

"They're capable of developing and building multi-million dollar baseball stadiums. They're able to do the same thing for football stadiums. OK, take care of your own infrastructure, too," Edwards said.

Monheiser is ready to build that multi-million dollar landfill in south Kansas City.

"I feel like we should be responsible for our own trash, and be responsible for the trucks that haul them," she said. "And hauling them farther away is irresponsible."

Monheiser's testimony before a Missouri Senate Committee in April called her proposed landfill site a solution for Kansas City's trash problem for decades to come.

"We have a trash problem here in our region," she said. "And if we don't get a hold of it quickly, then we're going to be in a spot where we're going to have an even bigger, catastrophic problem."

But you don't have to look far around the southern part of the metro to see Monheiser's proposal isn't popular.

"We are still gathering data, but there is no science that we've gotten so far to say that this is going to be a hazard environmentally, or to anyone's health in the community," Monheiser said.

South Kansas City resident Rick Meyers is leading a group of neighbors dead set to prove the environmental hazards of a landfill so close in a community already struggling.

"I can tell you is, this particular location is across the street from a grade school," he said. "This is not the location. Two miles upstream from Longview Lake is not the location. In the middle of existing neighborhoods is not."

Clark-Thomas said her family and others have already felt the mental health strain of a potential new landfill.

Like thousands of her neighbors, she does not want the landfill anywhere in south Kansas City.

Clark-Thomas also said she sympathizes with the people of Pettis County.

"I don't want it anywhere," she said. "I don't want it in my backyard, I don't want it in your backyard. I don't want it with the farms. I don't want it with my family's farm in Sikeston, Missouri. I don't want it in St. Louis. I don't want it anywhere.

"But, if it has to go somewhere, go where it is less impactful to people."

Monheiser believes her landfill will not harm people around south Kansas City.

"If this was going to be an unsafe place, if it is proven to be an unsafe place for a landfill, we have no desire to put it here," she said.

Standley feels like his site in Pettis County is a better solution than the south Kansas City site.

He says his spot in Pettis County will impact the least amount of people, reiterating that very few neighbors would even see the landfill in this location.

He's even trying to ease concerns about a rail line being close to the site.

We asked, "Is that part of the plan? To bring in trash from other parts of the nation to this site?"

"Absolutely not," Standley said, adding that he's offered the community a written host agreement to make sure it doesn't happen. He says his site can help with Kansas City's trash for decades to come.

"Yeah, it's be out of mind out of sight for the people in Lee's Summit who don't want one, in Raymore," Taylor said. "But we don't want it either."

"We're not asking to truck it somewhere else," Edwards said. "We're just asking them to preserve our land values, to preserve our quality of life, and to have a future for Pettis County, for our children."

Gerken says he sympathizes with the people fighting the landfill in south Kansas City, Raymore, and Lee's Summit.

"We're the same type of people here that they are," he said. "This is in our backyard. We're the same as they are. We don't want it in our backyard either. So it's time to me. The legislators have been kicking the can down the road long enough. They need to look into an alternative."

Tim Ireland's backyard backs up to one of the Kansas City area's main landfills — Courtney Ridge in Sugar Creek.

"See that bag?" He pointed at the trees in his yard. "Actually, there's two there. One there, one there. In the fall and winter time, you can see them all over. There's probably 20 in every tree."

Ireland says he sees a lot of dust on his property and plastic bags.

"We have rodents, possums, raccoons. They get into everything. They dig up gardens. They kill your chickens," Ireland said.

Ireland wants to move away.

"That's in the plans," he said, adding that he'd have originally bought in a different area if he could have.

"Fight as much as you can," he said, "Because once they're in, you can't do nothing."

Bill Jones' yard butts to the landfill, too.

"Well, that high ridge is the landfill," Jones said.

He worked there when the landfill first came in. Now in retirement, he has a garden growing, and says he has no problems.

"We've lived here like 25 years, and we really haven't had any issues," he said. "When the wind blows hard, you have trash in your yard, maybe, and then they sometimes, usually, come and pick it up.

"Nobody wants to live by it like they say down south, here, but, you know, right here, we're doing fine," he said.

Joe Shinkle lives across the street. He says he doesn't even notice the landfill.

"I know it's right on the other side of the hill, but there's nothing," he said. "You don't ever hear anything. I don't ever smell anything."

Loma Marlatt has lived across the street from the landfill for decades.

"If you know what a hog lot and a feed lot smells like, that's what it smells like," she said. "And that's bad. And some days it's worse than others."

Marlatt says she had the opportunity for a buyout on her property when the landfill was put in. But she had kids to put through school and chose to stay.

She's lodged her complaints about the landfill for years.

"I had a ledger," she said. "And then I quit keeping it because I was calling three, four times a day."

A spokesperson for Republic Services, which operates the Courtney Ridge Landfill, says the company is committed to being a good neighbor and a steward of the environment.

That same spokesperson told KMBC 9 that the landfill has more than 20 years of lifespan remaining.

The opinions of those who live right next to our region's trash certainly matter, especially with the new debate over where a new landfill should go, or when we even need one.

"As a region, we might throw away three million tons of stuff in area landfills every year," Tom Jacobs said. He's the Chief Resilience Officer with the Mid-America Regional Council.

"Three million tons is just an enormous amount of stuff, right?"

Jacobs recently met with neighbors in Raymore and south Kansas City about a study of Kansas City's future landfill capacity.

"And we don't really know when we're going to need more," he said. "But it's probably at least 25 or 30 years out."

Jacobs says the study will look to better define those numbers. He also says Kansas City needs much stronger systems to encourage recycling and composting.

"And how do we create an infrastructure that meets our needs, that includes disposal, that helps us create this more resilient, sustainable, green, vibrant community that we all aspire to? To do these two things at the same time?"

Mayor Quinton Lucas is sponsoring a city-led study to look at the need for a landfill and at alternative solutions.

"Somebody needs to figure out a few things," he said. "Either we have less trash, which I think is good, or not, and we need to figure out somewhere to put it."

Lucas knows people around south Kansas City have called for no landfills anywhere in city limits.

We asked, "Would you be willing to step up as a leader of Kansas City and say we need to ban landfills in Kansas City?"

He said, "You know, I think that is a more prudent approach. You know, right now, we've introduced an ordinance that had put a moratorium on the existence of landfills for at least one year."

"What about a full ban, though?"

"A full ban on landfills? I actually find that to be something that I would be interested in exploring," Lucas said.

But he also recognizes if Kansas City bans landfills, others may follow.

"Reality does occur to me though, if Kansas City bans it, Lee's Summit will. Raymore, our Kansas-side suburbs, Liberty, and everyone will. And there might be a question as to when will there be any landfills ever? And we probably still need some somewhere," Lucas said.

Meyers is calling on the mayor to be a leader. As the president of the Stop the Landfill Coalition, he lives just a mile from the proposed landfill site. He says the city does not need a landfill so close to surrounding communities.

"And let's put this thing where the smoke and the fumes aren't going to drift into a grade school or a housing subdivision that's half a mile away," he said.

Meyers and landfill developer Jenny Monheiser agree on one point: We should all be concerned about the impact of so much waste still going to landfills.

But, they disagree about the true threat of one moving in so close to home.

"I want them to know that we hear you," Monheiser said. "We are currently gathering as much data so that we can have the most state-of-the-art technology to make sure that is not a problem for the region."

"You want to put your bag at the curb and be done, and you don't ever want to think about it again," Meyers said. "And then all of a sudden, you get the idea or the threat of this thing being dropped on your front porch."

While the residents of south Kansas City continue to push for a way to permanently stop the landfill in their backyard, Monheiser believes a permanent ban on landfills is bad policy.

"None of us can predict what's going to happen in the future," she said. "And, you know, so I think time to gather facts, gather the information, and then make strategic plans for what we need in the future is good policy."

But what if there's an alternative to landfills?

Neighbors around south Kansas City and Pettis County have floated alternatives like a waste-to-energy plant that burns trash to make electricity.

The United States has 75 waste-to-energy facilities across the country in 25 states. They're concentrated mainly in Florida and the northeast.

The EPA says they're more expensive to develop than landfills.

The question remains, where should one go?

Pettis County landfill developer Derrick Standley still believes his landfill is a better solution to help Kansas City manage its trash.

"There are better ways to do this," he said. "And they're extremely expensive."

Adding that the Pettis County site was chosen because of its remoteness.

But, those who live close continue to fight.

"Now's the time to do it before it ever gets here," Gerken said, "because if it gets here, there's nothing you can do."

"If there is someone who owns a huge amount of land in a community that absolutely doesn't care about landfills, yes or no, they could really solve our problem for us," Lucas said.

Signs all over south Kansas City show these neighbors don't want a landfill in their backyard.

We asked Monheiser about one sign in particular that reads Monheiser and her husband stand to be billionaires from this project.

"How much money do you plan to make?" we asked. "Is it billions from this project?"

"No sir," Monheiser said. "I'm not actually sure where that number came from. We are here as people in the community trying to provide a service to the citizens of the region."

It's clear wherever our trash goes, it can change the trajectory of our lives.

Trash can influence how we look at the world and the city around us.

Take a look at the deep and emotional impact of Kansas City's trash problem and where it might end up. It will ultimately come down to us all finding a way to use less, or even just throwing it away properly.

Until we as a region solve those bigger problems, today or tomorrow, if you see any trash on your block, can you get out like Miss Minnie Mitchem to clean up a dirty Kansas City?

"It's nice peoples here, it's a nice place to live," Mitchem said. "Yeah, it really is. I love Kansas City."